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of a rapport sans rapport, which conjures up Levinas’ definition of “response-ability” (14).
Even though Bensmaïa had only the Maghreb in mind when he came up with the concept of the “experimental nation,” nomadism is given an antipodean twist in the works of Australian novelist Christopher Koch, tales that invariably feature an adventurous and nomadic protagonist yearning for another land. Despite the fact that many of his novels are set in Asia, Koch may be thought of as a Caucasian writer clinging to the idea of a White Australia that pines for Europe, as attested in his last two books, Out of Ireland (1999) and The Many-Coloured Land (2002). Jean-François Vernay scrutinizes Koch’s Eurocentric fantasies as evidence of a lingering British Empire and of an interest in the “dying colonial world.” This form of nostalgia returns to the concerns of Loh’s opening essay.
Half of Empire: The “Other” America
Inclusions and exclusions with respect to the realm of power are discursive and deliberate, as in the case of the Caribbean islands, Puerto Rico, and Central America, which belong to the “other” America and share unique racial and cultural patterns of hybridity that influence their political positioning between North and South America. The resulting economic, political, and cultural interrelations of agents involved in the process of empire building are also addressed in all three of the articles that make up this unit.
Martinican writer Patrick Chamoiseau’s Goncourt Prize–winning novel Texaco (1992) examines the transformation of long-established colonialism in the Caribbean and its connection to the emerging global scape of empire at the turn of this century. Close scrutiny of essays by Antonio Benítez Rojo (Cuba), Caryl Phillips (St. Kitts), and Edouard Glissant (Martinique) reveals what Kristian Van Haesendonck wittily terms “light”colonialism in the broader Caribbean today. Van Haesendonck opposes the concept of light colonialism to Hardt and Negri’s idea of empire, which excludes the Caribbean region. Light colonialism, as a complex