Understanding Nation and Postnationalism
Narrative and Context in South Asian Literature
1st Edition
Will be published approx. on 30. October 2026
Book
Hardback
220 pages
978-1-032-94115-8 (ISBN)
Description
This volume explores the evolving landscape of nationalism in South Asia through the lens of literature and performance, examining how narratives challenge, contest, and reimagine the nation-state. Addressing themes of postnationalism, democratic critique, migration and trauma, rebellion against societal superstructures, and economic subjugation, the book brings together theoretical and explanatory discourses that illuminate the multidimensional nature of nationalist ideology and its literary representations.
Spanning the spectrum from subnationalism to postnationalism, this collection offers extensive geographical and conceptual coverage through diverse scholarly perspectives. The contributors - representing varied nationalities and ideological positions - engage with nationalism's shifting contours in an era where static borders no longer adequately define populations or identities. Each chapter presents a synchronic examination of nation-state concepts while collectively forming a diachronic narrative that traces the chronological evolution of nationalist thought. The volume demonstrates how literary studies uniquely capture the complexities of nation-state formation, revealing the predicaments of people caught between traditional nationalist frameworks and emerging postnational realities.
With a Foreword by Bill Ashcroft, this critical anthology will appeal to students, researchers, and academics in literature, cultural studies, diaspora studies, postcolonial studies, and South Asian studies. It will serve as an essential resource for those examining nation-state imaginaries, transnational identities, and the literary articulation of belonging in contemporary South Asia and beyond.
Spanning the spectrum from subnationalism to postnationalism, this collection offers extensive geographical and conceptual coverage through diverse scholarly perspectives. The contributors - representing varied nationalities and ideological positions - engage with nationalism's shifting contours in an era where static borders no longer adequately define populations or identities. Each chapter presents a synchronic examination of nation-state concepts while collectively forming a diachronic narrative that traces the chronological evolution of nationalist thought. The volume demonstrates how literary studies uniquely capture the complexities of nation-state formation, revealing the predicaments of people caught between traditional nationalist frameworks and emerging postnational realities.
With a Foreword by Bill Ashcroft, this critical anthology will appeal to students, researchers, and academics in literature, cultural studies, diaspora studies, postcolonial studies, and South Asian studies. It will serve as an essential resource for those examining nation-state imaginaries, transnational identities, and the literary articulation of belonging in contemporary South Asia and beyond.
Reviews / Votes
'This volume of essays examines the phenomenon, practice and politics of nationalisms and postnationalisms in South Asia. Literature as one of most powerful mediums of expressions complete with sentimentality, polemic, metaphorization and rhetoric, comes in as a handy lens to examine such practices in the essays. Covering a wide range of texts from antiquity's Panchatantra to the 19th century, and then to the contemporary, the essays unpack strategies of inclusion and exclusion, contestation and affirmation in practices and ideologies of the nation-state. Attentive to representational modes, from theatre to longer fiction, the volume is a useful introduction to the field, and would be of interest to literary studies scholars but also to students in the Social Sciences who may want to see how political ideas shape, and are shaped by, institutions such as Literature.'-Pramod K Nayar, FEA, FRHistS, Professor of English, and UNESCO Chair in Vulnerability Studies, University of Hyderabad
'To understand human relations in the 21st Century we need nuanced perspectives on local and transnational structures and the globalizing pressures impacting them. Approaching these relations from varied literary and theoretical perspectives, Understanding Nation and Postnationalism: Narrative and Context in South Asian Literature explores modern writing from the Subcontinent that offers invaluable insights into the societal patterns that shape nations.'
-Thomas Jay Lynn, Professor of English, Penn State Berks
'The volume is a timely interrogation of and engagement with South Asian texts, reimagining the nation as a fluid cultural construct while mapping post-national thoughts in an increasingly globalised world caught between acceptance and resistance. The voices available here will prompt critical dialogues among scholars of postcolonial and literary studies.'
-Shamsad Mortuza, Professor, University of Dhaka and Vice Chancellor, University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Academic, General, Postgraduate, and Undergraduate Advanced
Illustrations
8 s/w Photographien bzw. Rasterbilder, 8 s/w Abbildungen
8 Halftones, black and white; 8 Illustrations, black and white
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
ISBN-13
978-1-032-94115-8 (9781032941158)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Shruti Das is Professor and Former Head at PG Department of English, Berhampur University, Odisha, India. Her academic contributions extend globally, having lectured as a visiting faculty at universities in Poland (2017) and Brazil (2024). She is listed in the ALA Directory of Scholars at Princeton University, USA, and has received accolades such as the ALSE Biennial Travel Award for her research on Indigenous tribes of Odisha. She has authored 13 books and over 100 research papers as journal articles and book chapters."
Content
List of Figures. List of Contributors. Foreword. Acknowledgements. Introduction. Section I: Understanding Nation: Narrative and Performance 1. The Collapse of the Nation in Anita Desai's Baumgartner's Bombay 2. Performing Region, Realizing Nation 3. Re-contextualizing Identities and Ideologies of a Nation 4. A Postnational Reading of Ethical Universality in Vishnu Sharma's Panchatantra 5. Mapping the Border, Mapping the Mind: A Study of Sunanda Sikdar's Dayamayeer Katha (A Life Long Ago) 6. Subnationality Vis-A-Vis Self-Determination in Indira Goswami's The Shadow of Kamakhya and Anjum Hasan's Lunatic in My Head Section II: Nation and Postnationalism: Ideology and Narration 7. Apocalyptic Discovery of Cultural and National Identity in the Colonized Protagonists of Amitav Ghosh Novels: Evidence from The Glass Palace and Flood of Fire 8. A Critique of Democracy: An Analysis of Arundhati Roy's Select Non-Fiction 9. Nation- Building and Development Discourse vis-a-vis Indigenous Rights: A Study in Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar's "The Adivasi Will Not Dance" 10. Family and Indian English Novel: A Study of Anita Rau Badami's The Hero's Walk 11. Persecution, Exile and Exodus of Kashmiri Pandits - Home away from Home in Our Moon has Blood Clots 12. Undoing the Folded Lie: Reflections on the Subaltern Will to Subversion 13. Rabindranath Tagore's Nationalism and Postcolonial Dissensus in Tasher Desh 14. Rebel as/in Creative Annihilator: Resistance in Nazrul Islam and Bairagi Kainla Index