Disturbing Conventions Decentering Thai Literary Cultures [Paperback]

An interdisciplinary collection that seeks to explore Thai literature in the wider context of the global perspectives, themes and debates within the study of World Literature. In the wake of recent unrest in the country, it offers a rare insight into the unique cultural, political and historical context of Thailand.Disturbing Conventions draws the study of Thai literature out of the relative isolation that has to date impeded its participation in the wider field of comparative and world literature. Predominantly penned by Thai academics, the collection decentres Thai literary studies in order to move beyond the traditionalist, conservative concerns of the academy which have, until relatively recently, foreclosed the use of Western theory in the study of Thai literature. The book introduces new frames of analysis to the study of Thai literature to bring it into dialogue with debates in wider fields and the world beyond its national borders. As a result, Disturbing Conventions offers an essential contribution to the comparative study of world literature and Asian cultural studies.Foreword: Decentering Siam/Thailand in Southeast Asia and the World - Thongchai Winichakul (University of WisconsinMadison)/ Introduction: Theoretical F(r)ictions: Cultures of Criticism, Modes of Colonialism and Thai Literary Studies - Rachel V. Harrison/ Section I: Implication, Influence and the Colonial West/ 1. The Making of the Thai Canon: Semicoloniality, Print Capitalism, and the Reconfiguration of Cultural Authority (Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok)/ 2. Through the Literary Looking Glass: Vajiravudhs Writings and Siams Negotiations with the Imperial West - Thosaeng Chaochuti (Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok)/ 3. Mummies, Sex and Sand: Bangkok Gothic and the Adventure Fiction of Victorian Siam - Rachel V. Harrison/ Section II: Conceptualizing Thai Modernity through its Others: The Rural-Urban Divide/ 4. Luk Isan (A Child of the North East): Techniques of Composition and Issuel#/