Speaking of the Self: Gender, Performance, and Autobiography in South Asia - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0822359839 ISBN 13: 9780822359838

Publisher: Duke University Press Books, 2015

Synopsis

Many consider the autobiography to be a Western genre that represents the self as fully autonomous. The contributors to Speaking of the Self challenge this presumption by examining a wide range of women's autobiographical writing from South Asia. Expanding the definition of what kinds of writing can be considered autobiographical, the contributors analyze everything from poetry, songs, mystical experiences, and diaries to prose, fiction, architecture, and religious treatises. The authors they study are just as diverse: a Mughal princess, an eighteenth-century courtesan from Hyderabad, a nineteenth-century Muslim prostitute in Punjab, a housewife in colonial Bengal, a Muslim Gandhian devotee of Krishna, several female Indian and Pakistani novelists, and two male actors who worked as female impersonators. The contributors find that in these autobiographies the authors construct their gendered selves in relational terms. Throughout, they show how autobiographical writing—in whatever form it takes—provides the means toward more fully understanding the historical, social, and cultural milieu in which the author performs herself and creates her subjectivity.

Contributors: Asiya Alam, Afshan Bokhari, Uma Chakravarti, Kathryn Hansen, Siobhan Lambert-Hurley, Anshu Malhotra, Ritu Menon, Shubhra Ray, Shweta Sachdeva Jha, Sylvia Vatuk
 

About this title

About the Author:

Anshu Malhotra is Associate Professor of History at the University of Delhi and the author of Gender, Caste, and Religious Identities: Restructuring Class in Colonial Punjab.

Siobhan Lambert-Hurley is Reader in International History at the University of Sheffield and author of Muslim Women, Reform and Princely Patronage: Nawab Sultan Jahan Begam of Bhopal.  

Review:

"With sophisticated, crisply written, and well-documented essays, Speaking of the Self makes a distinctive and significant contribution to several fields, including comparative autobiography, women's studies, and South Asian history. A tour de force, the editors' introduction is a major statement on autobiographical writing, and the essays, like the introduction, are accessible to a wide audience. Speaking of the Self broadens the genres of what should be considered under the broad umbrella of autobiography with cogent analysis." (Barbara Ramusack, author of The Indian Princes and their States)

"In analyzing material from South Asia, across contexts and time periods, Speaking of the Self is a novel contribution to the flourishing field of autobiography studies. The contributors present material little known to Anglophone audiences that will stimulate thinking by specialists who have heretofore been mostly focused on 'Western' texts and contexts."  (Marilyn Booth, author of Classes of Ladies of Cloistered Spaces)

About this edition

• Publisher: Duke University Press Books
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0822359839
• ISBN 13: 9780822359838
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 328
• Editor: Malhotra Anshu, Lambert-Hurley Siobhan