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Uses postcolonial theory to critique the globalization of gay culture.
"Samir Dayal’s book Resisting Modernity is provocative. Provocative because it undoes the allures of propulsion toward modernity at the same time that it refrains from a retreat into an idyllic and elusive pre-colonial past. Drawing on a wide body of postcolonial studies scholarship emanating from South Asia and on psychoanalytic theory, Dayal complicates our understanding of three prominent Indian figures—Ramakrishna Paramahansa, Rabindranath Tagore, and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi—active in the decades before independence from British colonial rule. He sees them as resisting the modernist rhetoric of sovereignty and rational nationalism prevalent in those years. Through his focus on t...
This book examines the trends, perspectives and changes witnessed in the previously undocumented communities of India’s northeast, emphasising the continuity and transformations of these societies. Each chapter questions the nature of change, and highlights issues which are not a matter of choice but of conviction of the society. This volume will be informative to students and researchers in area studies programmes, anthropology, sociology, history, political science, law, public administration, and ethnology.
In Dream Machine, Samir Dayal provides a history of Hindi cinema starting with films made after India's independence in 1947. Dayal suggests that Hindi cinema functions as both mirror and lamp, reflecting and illuminating new and possible representations of national and personal identity, beginning with early postcolonial films including Awaara and Mother India, a classic of the Golden Age. More recent films address critical social issues, such as My Name is Khan and Fire, which concern terrorism and sexuality, respectively. Dayal also chronicles changes in the industry, audience reception, and the influence of globalization, considering such films as Slumdog Millionaire.
Preliminary Material -- TRAVERSING TRANSNATIONALISM /Pier Paolo Frassinelli , Ronit Frenkel and David Watson -- FRICTION AND FRAGMENTS: LOCAL COSMOPOLITANISM IN POSTCOLONIAL MOZAMBIQUE /Pamila Gupta -- VELVET AND VIOLENCE: PERFORMING THE MEDIATIZED MEMORY OF SHANGHAI'S FUTURITY /Amanda Lagerkvist -- TOWARDS AN AESTHETIC POLITICS OF TRANSNATIONAL HISTORY: ASIAN AMERICANS IN A DECOLONIZING HAWAI'I /Bianca Kai Isaki -- IMMIGRATION AND “OPERATIONS”: THE MILITARIZATION (AND MEDICALIZATION) OF THE US-MEXICO BORDER /Sang Hea Kil -- “I HAD FORGOTTEN A CONTINENT”: COSMOPOLITAN MEMORY IN DEREK WALCOTT'S OMEROS /Shane Graham -- LOCAL TRANSNATIONALISMS: ISHTIYAQ SHUKRI'S THE SILENT MINARET AND S...
Beirut to Carnival City: Reading Rawi Hage is a pioneering collection of commissioned critical essays on the work of the highly relevant Canadian writer. With four acclaimed novels and scattered short fictions, the Lebanese-born Hage has become a formidable literary force. The volume is an attempt to situate his fiction not only in the context of Lebanese diasporic writing, but that of trans-geographical literature, as well as to emphasize his progressive dissociation from the realist paradigm. The goal is also to correct an imbalance of critical attention by refocusing on Hage’s more recent, equally challenging work. The richness of Hage’s fiction is attested to by the diversity of thematic concerns and critical approaches. The volume reflects the worldwide range of Canada-oriented research, and places European perspectives alongside North American and Lebanese ones. Significantly, it features an original essay authored by Hage’s literary peer, Madeleine Thien. Contributors: F. Elizabeth Dahab, André Forget, Kyle Gamble, Syrine Hout, Ewa Macura-Nnamdi, Krzysztof Majer, Lisa Marchi, Judit Molnár, Alex Ramon, Rita Sakr, Dima Samaha, Madeleine Thien, Ewa Urbaniak-Rybicka
This interdisciplinary collection of critical articles seeks to reassess the concept of hybridity and its relevance to post-colonial theory and literature. The challenging articles written by internationally acclaimed scholars discuss the usefulness of the term in relation to such questions as citizenship, whiteness studies and transnational identity politics. In addition to developing theories of hybridity, the articles in this volume deal with the role of hybridity in a variety of literary and cultural phenomena in geographical settings ranging from the Pacific to native North America. The collection pays particular attention to questions of hybridity, migrancy and diaspora.
Salman Rushdie's writing is engaged with translation in many ways: translator-figures tell and retell stories in his novels, while acts of translation are catalysts for climactic events. Covering his major novels as well as his often-neglected short stories and writing for children, Salman Rushdie and Translation explores the role of translation in Rushdie's work. In this book, Jenni Ramone draws on contemporary translation theory to analyse the part translation plays in Rushdie's appropriation of historical and contemporary Indian narratives of independence and migration.
In this era of increasing global mobility, identities are too complex to be captured by concepts that rely on national borders for reference. Such identities are not unified or stable, but are fluid entities which constantly push at the boundaries of the nation-state, thereby re-defining themselves and the nation-state simultaneously. Contemporary literature pays specific attention to internal and external notions of belonging ("Politics of Motion") and definitions of self resulting from interpersonal relationships ("Politics of Longing"). This collection looks at texts by authors who are British, American, or Canadian, but for whom a self-definition according national parameters is insufficient.
In these spirited and powerfully written essays, a new generation of intellectuals makes its mark, challenging conservatives and liberals alike to chart a new course for a responsible politics in contemporary society. A new intellectual movement on the left emerges here. No longer trapped by the old polarizing antagonism between Marxism and feminism, these authors demonstrate as never before the need for an awaremess of gender as it affects every aspect of our society. At the same time, these paradigmatic essays map out a new terrain for feminist thinking, one that fully recognizes the complex workings of gender and leaves oppositional feminism far behind. In the keynote essay, Ambivalence a...