Contesting Postcolonialisms: Second Edition - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 8170338670 ISBN 13: 9788170338673

Publisher: Rawat Publications, 2004

Synopsis

"Contesting Postcolonialisms is a collection of essays which address the complexity of the term and its myriad meanings. They seek to define, analyse, critique and contest its meanings, its history and implications. In the process of doing so, they are compelled to confront the plurality of its origins and the essential fluidity of the term. It is not possible to draw a linear graph of the development of postcolonialism because of the complexity of the concept. The identifiable political markers are not enough; there are other less visible ones which relate to the production of knowledge and attitudes of mind. Postcolonialism has affiliations with several disciplines. Looked upon both as an emancipatory strategy and a confining one, postcolonialism has both its negative and affirmative aspects. Of the twenty-five essays in this collection, seven are exclusively on theory and theoretical positions and critique the works of major postcolonial theorists like M.K. Gandhi, Edward Said, Ashis Nandy, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Aijaz Ahmad. They debate the issues presenting counterpoints to each other. Of the rest, four are on poetry, two each on drama and non-fiction and the rest on fiction, focusing on writers like Raja Rao, P. Parthasarthy, Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, V.S. Naipaul, Salman Rushdie, Arun Kolatkar among others. One essay looks at imperial postcolonialism and two others move beyond postcolonialism. Identifying major postcolonial texts like Kanthapura, Things Fall Apart and Midnights Children, the writers go on to explore the different conflictual levels and the strategies employed to resist hegemonic structures and to retrieve lost inheritances, sweeping away the residual elements of postcolonial literatures."

About this title

About the Author:

Jasbir Jain is director of the Institute for Research in Interdisciplinary Studies (IRIS), Jaipur. Formerly of the University of Rajasthan, she has headed the Department of English and has worked in various capacities including the directorship of the Academic Staff College.Jain has travelled extensively and has been the recipient of several awards. Amongst them are the Sahitya Akademi Fellowship as Writer in Residence (2009), UGC Fellow (2005 2007), Emeritus Fellow (2002 2004) and K.K. Birla Fellowship for Comparative Literature (1998 2000). Elected life-member of Clare Hall, Cambridge, she has also availed of the Fulbright Fellowship and of the American Council of Learned Societies. In 2008, the South Asia Literary Association conferred on her the SALA Award for her work in Feminist and South Asian Studies and her distinguished scholarship. Earlier in 2004, she was awarded the Indian Association of Canadian Studies (IACS) Award in recognition of her outstanding contribution to Canadian Studies. The American Association of Colleges and Universities nominated her a Global Fellow for 2003.Her publications include three volumes on the Indian novel covering the period 1860 2000 and, interrogating the periodisation thrust on it, she went on to work on the connectivity across languages. Her current interests are in theory and narratology and in exploring traditions. Her recent work includes "Gendered Realities "and "Beyond Postcolonialism: The Dreams and Realities of a Nation "and a forthcoming work is "The Writer as Critic".

About this edition

• Publisher: Rawat Publications
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 8170338670
• ISBN 13: 9788170338673
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 324
• Editor: Jain Jasbir, Singh Veena