Professor in Comparative literature at Malmö University, Sweden. Main research interests: working-class literature and question about literature and class.
In this article I describe how contemporary Swedish literature which thematizes cultural diversit... more In this article I describe how contemporary Swedish literature which thematizes cultural diversity is understood within a powerful discourse about the so-called multicultural society, centred on an opposition between a culturally homogenous past and a culturally diverse present, and emphasizing the phenomena ethnicity and identity. I also try to suggest an alternative way of relating literature to a society characterized by diversity. This suggestion is based on Walter Benn Michaels' and Nancy Fraser's analyses of the epoch of "posthistoricism" and "the postsocialist condition" respectively, and my argument is that the study of the relationship between literature and diversity should be undertaken from a transformative/deconstructive perspective.
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Papers by Magnus Nilsson