Lying On The Postcolonial Couch: The Idea Of Indifference

Rukmini Bhaya Nair

ISBN 10: 0816633665 / ISBN 13: 9780816633661

Published by University of Minnesota Press, 2002

About this Item

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Seller Inventory # B9780816633661

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Lying On The Postcolonial Couch: The Idea Of Indifference
• Publisher: University of Minnesota Press
• Publication Date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0816633665
• ISBN 13: 9780816633661
• Binding: Paperback / softback
• Condition: New
• Weight: 465 grams

About this title

Synopsis

Exposes the complicity of language and its uses in the colonial project

A revealing look into the long afterlife of colonial conquest, Lying on the Postcolonial Couch offers an original, overarching concept that informs—and helps to explain—the workings of postcoloniality. This concept, "indifference," is a play on the key critical term "difference." Indifference is a cognitive stance invented during the colonial period for the purpose of organizing the complex domain of the Indian subcontinent, one that created its own brand of poetics. Considering postcoloniality as a symptomatic condition, this book proposes a cure involving a return to buried memories of colonial trauma before the phenomenon itself succumbs to the absolute indifference of the slowly gathering amnesia of the new millennium.

Rukmini Bhaya Nair traces a paper trail beginning in 1757 with the Battle of Plassey, winding through the contentious Mutiny of 1857, and ending with Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses predicament. Along this trail, she uncovers hidden residues of feeling, from guilt and mistrust to wonder and pleasure, and analyzes the linguistic pillars that hold up the institution of bureaucratic indifference that she exposes.

About the Author

Rukmini Bhaya Nair is professor of English and linguistics in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.