Colonialism, Modernity, and Literature A View from India

by Mohanty, Satya P.

• ISBN13: 9780230619043
• ISBN10: 0230619045
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-03-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

Mohanty has assembled an innovative volume of essays situated at the intersection of at least three multi-disciplinary fields: postcolonial and subaltern theory; comparative literary analysis, especially with a South Asian and transnational focus; and the study of "alternative" and "indigenous" modernities. Contributors emphasize the strategies of resistance that are encoded in third world literary texts; comparative literary analysis, across cultures and regions ' both within the "Global South" and beyond; the forms of indigenous modernity that preceded the colonial encounter, and thus provide alternatives to the modernity that was imposed through the colonial encounter with Europe; feminist perspectives in traditional and contemporary literature; and "realist" theoretical analyses of the epistemic implications of literary forms. This definitive new work grounds the political insights of postcolonial and subaltern theory in close textual analysis, and rather than make general pronouncements about "alternative modernities," it looks at their specifically textual (literary and cultural) manifestations.

Author Biography

Satya P. Mohanty is a Professor of English at Cornell University. His book, Literary Theory and the Claims of History, argues for a post-positivist realist theory of culture and literature and introduces a new theory of social identity, especially minority identity. He is one of the founders of the Future of Minority Studies (FMS) Research Project and the founding director of the FMS Summer Institute (established in 2005). He has co-edited Identity Politics Reconsidered and The Future of Diversity, both also from Palgrave.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Colonialism, Modernity, and Literature: Introducing the Issues--Satya P. Mohanty * PART I: VIEWS FROM BELOW: COMPARING LITERARY PERSPECTIVES * Critical Realisms in the Global South: Narrative Transculturation in Senapati’s Six Acres and a Third and García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude--Jennifer Harford Vargas * Views from Above and Below:  George Eliot and Fakir Mohan Senapati--Paul L. Sawyer * Two Classic Tales of Village India: Investigating the Realist Epistemology in Chha Mana Atha Guntha and Godaan--Himansu S. Mohapatra * Girls for Sale and Six Acres: The Shared World of Gurajada Apparao and Fakir Mohan Senapati--Velcheru Narayana Rao * The Emergence of the Modern Subject in Oriya and Assamese Literatures: Fakir Mohan Senapati and Hemchandra Barua--Tilottoma Misra * ‘Why Don’t You Speak?’: The Narrative Politics of Silence in Three South Asian Novels--Ulka Anjaria * PART II: THE MANY CONTEXTS OF SIX ACRES AND A THIRD * Gender and the Representation of Women in Six Acres and a Third--Claire Horan * Rediscovering Ramachandra Mangaraj. Chha Mana Atha Guntha: A Critique of Colonial Rule--Gaganendra Nath Dash * Tradition-Modernity Dialectic in Six Acres and a Third--Debendra K. Dash and Diptiranjan R. Pattanaik * Appendix: Hemchandra Barua’s Classic Text Bahire Rongsong Bhitare Kowabhaturi (Fair Outside and Foul Within)—Translated from the Assamese by Tilottoma Misra