After the Last Post
The Lives of Indian Historiography
Published on 27. March 2023
Book
Hardback
216 pages
978-0-19-286786-5 (ISBN)
Description
This book is about the production and consumption of specifically Indian history, framed by concerns with postmodernism and postcolonialism. Several parallel themes crosscut the book's central focus on the discipline of history: its intellectual history, its historiography, and its connection to memory, particularly in relation to the need to establish the collective identity of 'nation', 'community', or state, through a memorialization process that has much to do with history, or at least with claiming a historicity for collective memory. None of this can be undertaken without an understanding of the roles that history-writing and history-reading have played in public debates, or perhaps more accurately in public disputes.
Reviews / Votes
'This wide-ranging and polemical study unsettles many settled facts of professional historiography and does so with verve and brilliance. Looking back at the age of post-colonialism, post-modernism, post-truth, and many other posts, Benjamin Zachariah uncovers the self-deceptions, anachronisms, and memory lapses that enable historical narratives as well as styles of history-writing. His book is a salutary reminder of the public duty of the historian, and of history's complicated, but always necessary, relation with evidence and the archive. It should be essential reading.' * Supriya Chaudhuri, Professor Emerita, Department of English, Jadavpur University *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Oxford
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Dimensions
Height: 216 mm
Width: 140 mm
Thickness: 14 mm
Weight
399 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-286786-5 (9780192867865)
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
Benjamin Zachariah read history at Presidency College, Calcutta, and at Trinity College, Cambridge. His published work includes a biography of Nehru (2004), 'Developing India' (2005/2012), 'Nation Games' (2011/2016/2020), and the co-edited volumes 'The Internationalist Moment' (2015) and 'What's Left of Marxism' (2020/2022). He was Reader at the University of Sheffield before moving to Germany where, among other posts, he was Senior Research Fellow at the University of Heidelberg, and at the University of Trier. His research interests centre on historiography and historical thinking in public forums, intellectual histories of the twentieth century, international revolutionary networks, and global fascism.
Content
- Preface to the South Asia Edition
- Preface: Reflections on Reflexivity
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: The Instrumentalization of Historiography and the Production of Victimhood
- PART I: MARKING THE POSTS
- 1: Identifying the Beast Within: Postcolonial Theory and History
- 2: Manifesto on Indirections: Histories, Collective Victimhood, and Postcolonialism
- PART II: INSTRUMENTALIZATIONS
- 3: The Revolt of Memory: 1857 in the Nationalist Imagination
- 4: Histories of Empire, Imperial Legitimation, and the Wartime Career of Penderel Moon
- 5: History, Cinema, and the Politics of Cultural Sensitivity in Interwar India
- PART III: POSTDISCURSIVE POSSIBILITIES
- 6: Moving Ideas and How to Catch Them
- 7: Travellers in Archives, or the Possibilities of a Post-PostArchival Historiography
- Afterword: Is There a Discipline to This?