RESISTING ALTERITIES: WILSON HARRIS AND OTHER AVATARS OF OTHERNESS

This volume of essays, poetry, and prose fiction records various attempts to read the fracture zones created by the discursive strategy of a democratic imagination where space and ideas are opened to new linguistic and literary insights. Pride of place is taken by essays on the Caribbean writer Wilson Harris, exploring the implications of his awareness of a polyphony of co-existent voices that dislodges the hegemony of Cartesian dualism. This group of studies is rounded off with an interview with, and searching testimony by, Harris himself. The further contributions take up the implications of the encounter with "alterity" (strangers, natives, barbarians) in order to understand not only wonder in the face of an unknown presence, or the "shame" through which the subject discovers itself, but also the "ressentiment" of demonized Others. Contributors: Shaul Bassi, Marina Camboni, Giovanna Covi, Eugenio De Signoribus, Douglas Duunn, Marco Fazzini (author of the interview with Harris, the intro to the volume and an essay on Edwin Morgan Science Fiction Poems), Wilson Harris, Johan Jacobs, Hena Maes-Jelinek, Renata Morresi, Armando Pajalich, Monica Pozzi, Charles Tomlinson, Luisa Villa, Christopher Whyte, Patrick Williams.