IndiaStar: A Literary-Art magazine

A Basic Bibliography
on
Postcolonial Theory

by Amardeep Singh

[Editor's intro: Amardeep Singh is pursuing his Ph.D. in English at Duke University. His dissertation, tentatively entitled Postcolonial Poetics, will attempt to theorize new poetic form in the 'realist' literatures of the Caribbean, West Africa, and South Asia. --C.J.S. Wallia]

 

 

This bibliography emerged in a books-discussion group, in which many of the participants expressed a disaffection with forms of literary criticism considered too obscure for readers not extensively trained in continental 'theory.' This list is then an attempt to assemble a body of 'practical' criticism, which gets to the heart of many of the issues and problems facing South Asian literature and culture without obscuring the issues with difficult jargon. The first section is primarily literary-criticism focused on South Asia. The second section is far more variable, spanning subjects such as cultural studies, film studies, anthropology, and history. I don't endorse everything to be found in every one of these texts, nor would I claim this is a completely inclusive or representative list.

Literary Criticism

Patrick Colm Hogan, Lalit Pandit, Eds. Literary India: Comparative Studies in Aesthetics, Colonialism, and Culture.
New York: SUNY Press, 1995.
Interviews with Bhabha and Anita Desai. Essays on Gora, Satayajit Ray. Ashis Nandy makes an appearance.

Ania Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism.
New York: Routledge, 1998.
This is my current favorite introductory book on these subjects. Loomba makes some necessary basic definitions (for instance, between "colonialism" and "imperialism"), and describes some of the major debates that have been occurring, quite fairly. Amazingly, she is able to represent the contribution of theorists like Bhabha, Spivak, and Said, while at the same time usefully representing criticism of their work by theorists like Aijaz Ahmad and Arif Dirlik.

Meenakshi Mukherjee. Realism and Reality.
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1985.
Probably the best introduction to the major Indian "vernacular" novelists, with whole chapters devoted to Bibhutibhusan Bandopadhyay's Pather Panchali, Premchand's Godan, and Anantha Murthy's Samskara. Mukherjee's book is unique in that it is informed by western novelistic tradition and theory (Wilkie Collins and Dickens; Lukacs's Theory of the Novel) as well as the likely indigenous influences acting on the first novelists in vernacular languages such as Hindi, Bengali, Telegu, Kannada, Malayalam, Urdu, and Marathi.

Bart Moore-Gilbert, Ed. Writing India: The Literature of British India. Manchester:
Manchester Univ. Press, 1996.
Essays on folks like Kipling, Forster, Scott, Meadows Taylor, and Rushdie, largely by young scholars at U.K. schools.

Jyotsna G. Singh. Colonial Narratives/Cultural Dialogues: "Discoveries" of India in the language of Colonialism.
New York: Routledge, 1996.
In the vein of Peter Hulme's groundbreaking Colonial Encounters - a study of colonial representations emphasizing the early modern period through the eighteenth century.

Jenny Sharpe. Allegories of Empire: The Figure of Woman in the Colonial Text.
Minneapolis: U Minnesota Press, 1993.
Sharpe's book makes some important insights on the ways in which the gendering of the 1857 Mutiny/Rebellion has played an important in the shaping of South Asian literature and history. Makes some of the same conclusions as, say, Spivak, but in a much clearer way.

Sara Suleri. Rhetoric of English India.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.
This book is every bit as difficult as Bhabha or Spivak, but in my view makes a really important series of connections. Perhaps the definitive reading of Burke's rhetoric in 'The Trial of Warren Hastings.' This one is decipherable, and furthermore, worth the effort.

Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, Ed. The Lie of the Land: English Literary Studies in India.
Delhi: OUP, 1992.
Essays on English/India/literature by all of the smartest people in the U. Delhi/JNU constellation, including Sunder Rajan, Loomba, Meenakshi Mukerjee, Ruth Vanita, Gauri Viswanathan, and others. Spivak also makes an appearance.

Harish Trivedi. Colonial Transactions: English Literature and India.
Calcutta: Papyrus, 1993.
Trivedi rewrites the history of English and Indian literary interaction, along a much more level playing field than one finds in, say, Bhabha's "Signs Taken For Wonders." A controversial and interesting argument.

Gauri Viswanathan. Masks of Conquest: Literary Study and British Rule in India.
London: Faber and Faber, 1990.
Viswanathan makes the crucial link between the development of English literary studies in India and the implementation of the Macaulayian vision of colonial administration.

CulturalStudies/Anthropology/
Film/History

Arjun Appadurai. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization.
Minneapolis: U Minnesota, 1996.
Film, religion, cricket, culture, everything! Famous for his elaboration of the "new global cultural economy" as a "complex, overlapping, disjunctive order," as well as his elaboration of the various "-scapes" that structure the various flows and blockages to be found in various places in the world today.

Deepika Bahri and Mary Vasudeva, Eds. Between the Lines: South Asians and Postcoloniality.
Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press, 1996.
Essays and interviews on diaspora, transnationalism, religion, South Asian media culture, and literary criticism. Interviews with Meena Alexander, Viswanathan, Spivak. Essays by Bahri, M.G. Vassanji, Amritjit Singh, Samir Dayal, and others.

Nandi Bhatia, "Staging Resistance: The Indian People's Theatre Association." in Lisa Lowe and David Lloyd, Eds. The Politics of Culture in the Shadow of Capital. Durham: Duke Univ. Press, 1997.
On the origins of the Indian People's Theatre Association around the time of the Quit India movement. An important contribution to the under-examined field of vernacular drama.

Sumita S. Chakravarty. National Identity in Indian Popular Cinema 1947-1987. Austin: UT Press, 1993.
This is the smartest book on Indian popular cinema I have been able to find. Discussions of films like Guide, Shri 420, and Bhumika. She tries to "recuperate India as a nation, not via its traditions of purity and exclusivity ..., but ... by foregrounding the contaminating, masquerading, impersonating impulse at its very heart."

Amdedeo Maiello. "Ethnic Conflict in post-colonial India." in Ian Chambers and Lidia Curti, Eds. The Post-Colonial Question. New York: Routledge, 1996.
An historical/sociological breakdown of some historical and infrastructural causes of ethnic/religious conflicts in the 1980's and 1990's in India.

Amitav Ghosh. In an Antique Land. New York: Vintage, 1992.
In a book which is ostensibly about a small chapter in the history of the Medieval Middle-East, Ghosh makes some startling assertions about the contemporary "Indian terror of symbols." This book thinks critically in a very creative, refreshing way.

Ashis Nandy. The Savage Freud, and Other Esays on Possible and Retrievable Selves. Princeton: Princeton, 1995.
Insightful essays on "Indian Terrorism", Girindrasekhar Bose, and Indian Cinema. Nandy does psychoanalytic readings with a kind of level-headed ease. A careful, 'Indianized' take on psychoanalysis with numerous good insights on the subcontinental psyche.