Other Disruptions: Imaginary Access and Excess in the Anglophone Migrant Novel

Abstract

To theorize the contemporary Anglophone novel today is to mark several crises and opportunities simultaneously. On the one hand, English and Englishes continue to dominate transnational literary markets in the shadow of global capitalism’s linguistic demands; on the other hand, much Anglophone writing has emerged within a genealogy of decolonization and is highly resistant to blanket notions that either English or the novel determine consciousness. Rather than mimic the disruptions common to capitalism’s technological renewal, this essay will explore the ways in which Anglophone novelists have challenged the normative conditions of global circulation, particularly in narratives of migration and diasporic crossing. What “Anglophone” traditionally offers as access is often reconfigured as excess when the migrant crosses borders—linguistically, socially, and narratologically. To trouble borders is also to disrupt how “Anglophone” is thought, expressed.