Andrea Ruthven (ADHUC—Universidad de Cantabria) is the coeditor, with Belén Martín-Lucas (Universidade de Vigo), of the volume Narratives of Difference in Globalized Cultures: Reading Transnational Cultural Commodities, published by Palgrave. This book discusses how the marketing of transnational cultural commodities capitalizes on difference and its appeal for cosmopolitan consumers in our post-modern globalised world. At what price? What ethical and political doubts does the artist/writer/reader confront when going global? This volume analyzes why difference - whether gender, sexual, racial, ethnic, or linguistic - has become such a prominent element in the contemporary cultural field, and the effects of this on the production, circulation and reception of cultural commodities in the context of globalization. At the intersection of globalization, diaspora, postcolonial and feminist studies in world literature, these essays engage with a wide variety of representative narratives taken from diverse cultural fields. The chapters included offer counter-readings that disrupt hegemonic representations of cultural identity within the contemporary, neoliberal and globalized landscape.
