Memory, Nationalism, and Narrative in Contemporary South Asia

This book investigates the ambivalent responses to the opposing compulsions of memory and forgetting in cultural production in South Asia. Mallot reveals how writers such as Salman Rushdie, Michael Ondaatje, and Amitav Ghosh indict nationalism's sins by accessing and encoding the past.

"Mallot's study is not only a thorough study of the pervasive nature of memory as it shapes contemporary South Asia, but also an invaluable exploration of the ways in which memory's empire is continually challenged and re-imagined: an erudite, sensitive, and very readable book." - Dave Gunning, University of Birmingham

'This distinctive book provides a provocative interrogation of some key tenets of memory and trauma studies. Through lively analysis of literature, film, and urban planning, it examines the diverse processes and politics of remembering on the subcontinent, convincingly arguing for more meticulous and culturally inflected memory work.' - Clare Barker, University of Leeds

"Mallot's book is an ambitious and timely project that interrogates Eurocentric assumptions that the act of remembering is purely positive and argues that a different paradigm may be necessary in South Asian contexts. The book examines memory, the relationship between memory and history, and the ethical implications and potential dangers of revisiting the past through a variety of texts, including a city that is the result of post-Partition urban planning, Hindi films, and Anglophone novels, by well-known South Asian/diasporic writers. This well-theorized and thoroughly researched work makes a valuable contribution to fields including South Asian Studies, Memory Studies, and Diaspora Studies." - Maryse Jayasuriya, University of Texas at El Paso

Autorentext
J. EDWARD MALLOT is an Assistant Professor of Anglophone Postcolonial Literature at Arizona State University, USA.

Inhalt
Introduction Part I: The Limits of Memory The City Beautiful: Remembering and Dismembering Chandigarh I Didn't Kill Gandhi: Memory and the Bollywood Assassin A. Sivanandan, Romesh Gunesekera and the Crisis of Sri Lankan Histories Part II: The Texts of Memory Salman Rushdie's Alternative Historiographies Body Politics and the Body Politic: Memory as Human Inscription in Anil's Ghost and What the Body Remembers 'A Land Outside Space, An Expanse Without Distances': Amitav Ghosh, Kamila Shamsie and the Maps of Memory