'At the end of a depressing year for politics, the environment, and gender and racial relations, we take this editorial as an opportunity for a palate-cleansing reflection on the more optimistic state of the field of postcolonial literary studies, and to pose some questions that take us into the year ahead.' (Claire Chambers, Rachael Gilmour Editorial introduction pp 3-6)
Contents indexed selectively.
'This article examines J. M. Coetzee’s use of intuitive and interpretive exchanges within and across the tripartite structure of Diary of a Bad Year (2007). It argues that Coetzee rejects strict understandings of the novel genre in favour of a more fluid form, enabling him to explore heteroglot exchanges within the two monologues on each page of Diary of a Bad Year and complicate conventional understandings of Bakhtin’s theory of dialogism. Creating multiple layers that begin with unspoken words, pass through an “othered” interpreter, and arrive at the reader via the novel’s narration, meaning is reconfigured and reconsidered in a way that distances it from the author. The essay further argues that Coetzee’s use of dialogic discourse in Diary of a Bad Year privileges the perspective of the Filipina woman whose voice drives much of the novel’s commentary as she wins the interpretive game Coetzee creates.' (Publication abstract)
