Indian Traffic. Identities in Question in Colonial and Postcolonial India.

ROY, PARAMA.

ISBN 10: 0520204875 / ISBN 13: 9780520204874

Published by University of California Press, United States, 1998

About this Item

Black and white photographic illustrations, vii + 236pp, index, bibliography, notes, sunned spine and adjacent section of upper cover, otherwise a very good paperback copy. "The continual, unpredictable, and often violent "traffic" between identities in colonial and postcolonial India is the focus of Parama Roy's stimulating and original book. Mimicry has been commonly recognized as an important colonial model of bourgeois/elite subject formation, and Roy examines its place in the exchanges between South Asian and British, Hindu and Muslim, female and male, and subaltern and elite actors." (Publisher's description).

Seller Inventory # 177051

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Indian Traffic. Identities in Question in Colonial and Postcolonial India.
• Publisher: University of California Press, United States
• Publication Date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0520204875
• ISBN 13: 9780520204874
• Binding: Soft cover
• Edition: First Edition.
• Seller catalogs:
  • India - Post 1947

About this title

Synopsis

The continual, unpredictable, and often violent "traffic" between identities in colonial and postcolonial India is the focus of Parama Roy's stimulating and original book. Mimicry has been commonly recognized as an important colonial model of bourgeois/elite subject formation, and Roy examines its place in the exchanges between South Asian and British, Hindu and Muslim, female and male, and subaltern and elite actors. Roy draws on a variety of sources―religious texts, novels, travelogues, colonial archival documents, and films―making her book genuinely interdisciplinary. She explores the ways in which questions of originality and impersonation function, not just for "western" or "westernized" subjects, but across a range of identities. For example, Roy considers the Englishman's fascination with "going native," an Irishwoman's assumption of Hindu feminine celibacy, Gandhi's impersonation of femininity, and a Muslim actress's emulation of a Hindu/Indian mother goddess. Familiar works by Richard Burton and Kipling are given fresh treatment, as are topics such as the "muscular Hinduism" of Swami Vivekananda.

Indian Traffic demonstrates that questions of originality and impersonation are in the forefront of both the colonial and the nationalist discourses of South Asia and are central to the conceptual identity of South Asian postcolonial theory itself.

About the Author

Parama Roy is Associate Professor of English at the University of California, Riverside.