Pramod K. Nayar - Böcker

This book studies human rights discourse across a variety of graphic novels, both fiction and non-fiction, originating in different parts of the world, from India to South Africa, Sarajevo to Vietnam, with texts on the Holocaust, the Partition of the Indian subcontinent, the Rwandan and Sarajevan genocides, the Vietnam War, comfort women in World War II and the Civil Rights movement in the USA, to mention a few.The book demonstrates the emergence of the ‘universal’ subject of human rights, despite the variations in contexts. It shows how war, rape, genocide, abuse, social iniquity, caste and race erode personhood in multiple ways in the graphic novel, which portrays the construction of vulnerable subjects, the cultural trauma of collectives, the crisis and necessity of witnessing, and resilience-resistance through specific representational and aesthetic strategies. It covers a large number of authors and artists: Joe Sacco, Joe Kubert, Matt Johnson-Walter Pleece, Guy Delisle, Appupen, Thi Bui, Olivier Kugler and others. Through a study of these vastly different authors and styles, the book proposes that the graphic novel as a form is perfectly suited to the ‘culture’ and the lingua franca of human rights due to its amenability to experimentation and the sheer range within the form. The book will appeal to scholars in comics studies, human rights studies, visual culture studies and to the general reader with an interest in these fields.

Ecoprecarity: Vulnerable Lives in Literature and Culture presents an examination of ecoprecarity - the precarious lives that humans lead in the process and event of ecological disaster, and the increasing precarious state of the environment itself as a result of human interventions - in contemporary literary-cultural texts. It studies the representation of 'invasion narratives' of the human body and the earth by alien life forms, the ecodystopian vision that informs much environmental thought in popular cultures, the states of ontological integrity and genetic belonging in the age of cloning, xenotransplantation and biotechnology's 'capitalisation' of life itself, and the construction of the 'wild' in these texts. It pays attention to the ecological uncanny and the monstrous that haunts ecodystopias and forms of natureculture that emerge in the bioeconomies since the late twentieth century.

This volume brings together an unusual collection of British captivity writings – composed during and after imprisonment and in conditions of siege. Writings from the ‘Mutiny’ of 1857 are well known, but there exists a vast body of texts, from Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and Burma, and the Indian subcontinent, that have rarely been compiled or examined. Written in anxiety and distress, or recalled with poignancy and anger, these siege narratives depict a very different Briton. A far cry from the triumphant conqueror, explorer or ruler, these texts give us the vulnerable, injured and frightened Englishman and woman who seek, in the most adverse of conditions, to retain a measure of stoicism and identity. From Robert Knox’s 17th-century account of imprisonment in Sri Lanka, through J. Z. Holwell’s famous account of the ‘Black Hole’ of Calcutta, through Florentia Sale’s Afghan memoir, and Lady Inglis’s ‘Mutiny’ diary from Lucknow, the book opens up a dark and revealing corner of the colonial archive. Lucid and intriguing, this book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of modern South Asia, colonial history, literary and culture studies.

For two hundred years India was the jewel in the British imperial crown. During the course of governing India – the Raj – a number of words came to have particular meanings in the imperial lexicon. This book documents the words and terms that the British used to describe, define, understand and judge the subcontinent. It offers insight into the cultures of the Raj through a sampling of its various terms, concepts and nomenclature, and utilizes critical commentaries on specific domains to illuminate not only the linguistic meaning of a word but its cultural and political nuances.This fascinating book also provides literary and cultural texts from the colonial canon where these Anglo-Indian colloquialisms, terms and official jargon occurred. It enables us to glean a sense of the Empire’s linguistic and cultural tensions, negotiations and adaptations. The work will interest students and researchers of history, language and literature, colonialism, cultural studies, imperialism and the British Raj, and South Asian studies.

This book studies human rights discourse across a variety of graphic novels, both fiction and non-fiction, originating in different parts of the world, from India to South Africa, Sarajevo to Vietnam, with texts on the Holocaust, the Partition of the Indian subcontinent, the Rwandan and Sarajevan genocides, the Vietnam War, comfort women in World War II and the Civil Rights movement in the USA, to mention a few.The book demonstrates the emergence of the ‘universal’ subject of human rights, despite the variations in contexts. It shows how war, rape, genocide, abuse, social iniquity, caste and race erode personhood in multiple ways in the graphic novel, which portrays the construction of vulnerable subjects, the cultural trauma of collectives, the crisis and necessity of witnessing, and resilience-resistance through specific representational and aesthetic strategies. It covers a large number of authors and artists: Joe Sacco, Joe Kubert, Matt Johnson-Walter Pleece, Guy Delisle, Appupen, Thi Bui, Olivier Kugler and others. Through a study of these vastly different authors and styles, the book proposes that the graphic novel as a form is perfectly suited to the ‘culture’ and the lingua franca of human rights due to its amenability to experimentation and the sheer range within the form. The book will appeal to scholars in comics studies, human rights studies, visual culture studies and to the general reader with an interest in these fields.

This book explores the formations and configurations of British colonial discourse on India through a reading of prose narratives of the 1600-1920 period. Arguing that colonial discourse often relied on aesthetic devices in order to describe and assert a degree of narrative control over Indian landscape, Pramod Nayar demonstrates how aesthetics furnished a vocabulary and representational modes for the British to construct particular images of India.Looking specifically at the aesthetic modes of the marvellous, the monstrous, the sublime, the picturesque and the luxuriant, Nayar marks the shift in the rhetoric – from the exploration narratives from the age of mercantile exploration to that of the ‘shikar’ memoirs of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century’s extreme exotic. English Writing and India provides an important new study of colonial aesthetics, even as it extends current scholarship on the modes of early British representations of new lands and cultures.

This book examines the ‘cultural apparatus’ of Human Rights in India today. It unravels discourses of victimhood, oppression, suffering and witnessing through a study of autobiographies, memoirs, reportage and media coverage, and documentaries. Moving across multiple media and genres for their representations of Dalits, riot victims, prisoners, abused and abandoned women and children, examining the formal properties of victim texts for their documentation of trauma, and analyzing the role of the sympathetic imagination, Writing Wrongs inaugurates a whole new field in literary–cultural studies by focusing on the narratives that build the culture of Human Rights. It argues for taking this cultural apparatus as essential to the political and legal dimensions of Human Rights. The book emphasizes the need for an ethical turn to literary–cultural studies and a cultural turn to Human Rights studies, arguing that a public culture of Human Rights has a key role to play in revitalizing civil society and its institutions. It will be of interest to Human Rights scholars and activists, and those in political science, sociology, literary and cultural studies, narrative theory and psychology.

Frantz Fanon has established a position as a leading anticolonial thinker, through key texts such as Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth. He has influenced the work of thinkers from Edward Said and Homi Bhabha to Paul Gilroy, but his complex work is often misinterpreted as an apology for violence.This clear, student-friendly guidebook considers Fanon’s key texts and theories, looking at: Postcolonial theory’s appropriation of psychoanalysis Anxieties around cultural nationalisms and the rise of native consciousness Postcoloniality’s relationship with violence and separatism New humanism and ideas of community. Introducing the work of this controversial theorist, Pramod K. Nayar also offers alternative readings, charting Fanon’s influence on postcolonial studies, literary criticism and cultural studies.

Frantz Fanon has established a position as a leading anticolonial thinker, through key texts such as Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth. He has influenced the work of thinkers from Edward Said and Homi Bhabha to Paul Gilroy, but his complex work is often misinterpreted as an apology for violence.This clear, student-friendly guidebook considers Fanon’s key texts and theories, looking at: Postcolonial theory’s appropriation of psychoanalysis Anxieties around cultural nationalisms and the rise of native consciousness Postcoloniality’s relationship with violence and separatism New humanism and ideas of community. Introducing the work of this controversial theorist, Pramod K. Nayar also offers alternative readings, charting Fanon’s influence on postcolonial studies, literary criticism and cultural studies.

This book explores the formations and configurations of British colonial discourse on India through a reading of prose narratives of the 1600-1920 period. Arguing that colonial discourse often relied on aesthetic devices in order to describe and assert a degree of narrative control over Indian landscape, Pramod Nayar demonstrates how aesthetics furnished a vocabulary and representational modes for the British to construct particular images of India.Looking specifically at the aesthetic modes of the marvellous, the monstrous, the sublime, the picturesque and the luxuriant, Nayar marks the shift in the rhetoric – from the exploration narratives from the age of mercantile exploration to that of the ‘shikar’ memoirs of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century’s extreme exotic. English Writing and India provides an important new study of colonial aesthetics, even as it extends current scholarship on the modes of early British representations of new lands and cultures.

The Transnational in English Literature examines English literary history through its transnational engagements and argues that every period of English Literature can be examined through its global relations. English identity and nationhood is therefore defined through its negotiation with other regions and cultures.The first book to look at the entirety of English literature through a transnational lens, Pramod Nayar:Maps the discourses that constitute the global in every age, from the Early Modern to the twentieth centuryOffers readings of representative texts in poetry, fiction, essay and drama, covering a variety of genres such as Early Modern tragedy, the adventure novel, the narrative poem, Gothic and utopian fictionExamines major authors including Shakespeare, Defoe, Behn, Swift, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Austen, Mary Shelley, the Brontës, Doyle, Ballantyne, Orwell, Conrad, Kipling, ForsterLooks at themes such as travel and discovery, exoticism, mercantilism, commodities, the civilisational mission and the multiculturalization of England.Useful for students and academics alike this book offers a comprehensive survey of the English canon questioning and analysing the transnational and global engagements of English literature.

The Transnational in English Literature examines English literary history through its transnational engagements and argues that every period of English Literature can be examined through its global relations. English identity and nationhood is therefore defined through its negotiation with other regions and cultures.The first book to look at the entirety of English literature through a transnational lens, Pramod Nayar:Maps the discourses that constitute the global in every age, from the Early Modern to the twentieth centuryOffers readings of representative texts in poetry, fiction, essay and drama, covering a variety of genres such as Early Modern tragedy, the adventure novel, the narrative poem, Gothic and utopian fictionExamines major authors including Shakespeare, Defoe, Behn, Swift, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Austen, Mary Shelley, the Brontës, Doyle, Ballantyne, Orwell, Conrad, Kipling, ForsterLooks at themes such as travel and discovery, exoticism, mercantilism, commodities, the civilisational mission and the multiculturalization of England.Useful for students and academics alike this book offers a comprehensive survey of the English canon questioning and analysing the transnational and global engagements of English literature.

This timely book examines the rise of posthumanism as both a material condition and a developing philosophical-ethical project in the age of cloning, gene engineering, organ transplants and implants. Nayar first maps the political and philosophical critiques of traditional humanism, revealing its exclusionary and ‘speciesist’ politics that position the human as a distinctive and dominant life form. He then contextualizes the posthumanist vision which, drawing upon biomedical, engineering and techno-scientific studies, concludes that human consciousness is shaped by its co-evolution with other life forms, and our human form inescapably influenced by tools and technology. Finally the book explores posthumanism’s roots in disability studies, animal studies and bioethics to underscore the constructed nature of ‘normalcy’ in bodies, and the singularity of species and life itself. As this book powerfully demonstrates, posthumanism marks a radical reassessment of the human as constituted by symbiosis, assimilation, difference and dependence upon and with other species. Mapping the terrain of these far-reaching debates, Posthumanism will be an invaluable companion to students of cultural studies and modern and contemporary literature.

This timely book examines the rise of posthumanism as both a material condition and a developing philosophical-ethical project in the age of cloning, gene engineering, organ transplants and implants. Nayar first maps the political and philosophical critiques of traditional humanism, revealing its exclusionary and ‘speciesist’ politics that position the human as a distinctive and dominant life form. He then contextualizes the posthumanist vision which, drawing upon biomedical, engineering and techno-scientific studies, concludes that human consciousness is shaped by its co-evolution with other life forms, and our human form inescapably influenced by tools and technology. Finally the book explores posthumanism’s roots in disability studies, animal studies and bioethics to underscore the constructed nature of ‘normalcy’ in bodies, and the singularity of species and life itself. As this book powerfully demonstrates, posthumanism marks a radical reassessment of the human as constituted by symbiosis, assimilation, difference and dependence upon and with other species. Mapping the terrain of these far-reaching debates, Posthumanism will be an invaluable companion to students of cultural studies and modern and contemporary literature.

This 5 volume set tracks the various legal, administrative and social documentation on the progress of Indian education from 1780 to 1947. The documents not only map a cultural history of English education in India, but capture the debates in and around each of these domains through coverage of English (language, literature, pedagogy), the journey from school-to-university, and technical and vocational education. Produced by statesmen, educationists, administrators, teachers, Vice Chancellors and native national leaders, the documents testify to the complex processes through which colleges were set up, syllabi formed, the language of instruction determined, and infrastructure built. The sources vary from official Minutes to orders, petitions to pleas, speeches to opinion pieces. The collection contributes, through the mostly unmediated documents, to our understanding of the British Empire, of the local responses to the Empire and imperial policy and of the complex negotiations within and without the administrative structures that set about establishing the college, the training institute and the teaching profession itself.

This 5-volume set tracks the various legal, administrative and social documentation on the progress of Indian education from 1780 to 1947. This first volume features commentaries, reports, policy documents from the period 1781-1853.The documents not only map a cultural history of English education in India but capture the debates in and around each of these domains through coverage of English (language, literature, pedagogy), the journey from school-to-university, and technical and vocational education. Produced by statesmen, educationists, administrators, teachers, Vice Chancellors and native national leaders, the documents testify to the complex processes through which colleges were set up, syllabi formed, the language of instruction determined, and infrastructure built. The sources vary from official Minutes to orders, petitions to pleas, speeches to opinion pieces. The collection contributes, through the mostly unmediated documents, to our understanding of the British Empire, of the local responses to the Empire and imperial policy and of the complex negotiations within and without the administrative structures that set about establishing the college, the training institute and the teaching profession itself.

This 5-volume set tracks the various legal, administrative and social documentation on the progress of Indian education from 1780 to 1947. This second volume features commentaries, reports, policy documents from the period 1854-1910.The documents not only map a cultural history of English education in India but capture the debates in and around each of these domains through coverage of English (language, literature, pedagogy), the journey from school-to-university, and technical and vocational education. Produced by statesmen, educationists, administrators, teachers, Vice Chancellors and native national leaders, the documents testify to the complex processes through which colleges were set up, syllabi formed, the language of instruction determined, and infrastructure built. The sources vary from official Minutes to orders, petitions to pleas, speeches to opinion pieces. The collection contributes, through the mostly unmediated documents, to our understanding of the British Empire, of the local responses to the Empire and imperial policy and of the complex negotiations within and without the administrative structures that set about establishing the college, the training institute and the teaching profession itself.

This 5-volume set tracks the various legal, administrative and social documentation on the progress of Indian education from 1780 to 1947. This third volume features commentaries, reports, policy documents from the period 1911-1945.The documents not only map a cultural history of English education in India but capture the debates in and around each of these domains through coverage of English (language, literature, pedagogy), the journey from school-to-university, and technical and vocational education. Produced by statesmen, educationists, administrators, teachers, Vice Chancellors and native national leaders, the documents testify to the complex processes through which colleges were set up, syllabi formed, the language of instruction determined, and infrastructure built. The sources vary from official Minutes to orders, petitions to pleas, speeches to opinion pieces. The collection contributes, through the mostly unmediated documents, to our understanding of the British Empire, of the local responses to the Empire and imperial policy and of the complex negotiations within and without the administrative structures that set about establishing the college, the training institute and the teaching profession itself.

This 5-volume set tracks the various legal, administrative and social documentation on the progress of Indian education from 1780 to 1947. This fourth volume features commentaries, reports and policy documents from the period 1823-1920 from an Indian perspective.The documents not only map a cultural history of English education in India but capture the debates in and around each of these domains through coverage of English (language, literature, pedagogy), the journey from school-to-university, and technical and vocational education. Produced by statesmen, educationists, administrators, teachers, Vice Chancellors and native national leaders, the documents testify to the complex processes through which colleges were set up, syllabi formed, the language of instruction determined, and infrastructure built. The sources vary from official Minutes to orders, petitions to pleas, speeches to opinion pieces. The collection contributes, through the mostly unmediated documents, to our understanding of the British Empire, of the local responses to the Empire and imperial policy and of the complex negotiations within and without the administrative structures that set about establishing the college, the training institute and the teaching profession itself.

This 5-volume set tracks the various legal, administrative and social documentation on the progress of Indian education from 1780 to 1947. This fifth volume features commentaries, reports and policy documents from the period 1921-1945 from an Indian perspective.The documents not only map a cultural history of English education in India but capture the debates in and around each of these domains through coverage of English (language, literature, pedagogy), the journey from school-to-university, and technical and vocational education. Produced by statesmen, educationists, administrators, teachers, Vice Chancellors and native national leaders, the documents testify to the complex processes through which colleges were set up, syllabi formed, the language of instruction determined, and infrastructure built. The sources vary from official Minutes to orders, petitions to pleas, speeches to opinion pieces. The collection contributes, through the mostly unmediated documents, to our understanding of the British Empire, of the local responses to the Empire and imperial policy and of the complex negotiations within and without the administrative structures that set about establishing the college, the training institute and the teaching profession itself.

This is a guide to the often complex area of postcolonial theory and literature from its historical origins to contemporary critical thinking and issues. Postcolonialism as a critical approach and pedagogic practice has informed literary and cultural studies since the late 1980s. The term is heavily loaded and has come to mean a wide, and often bewildering, variety of approaches, methods, politics and ideas. Beginning with the historical origins of postcolonial thought in the writings of Gandhi, Cesaire and Fanon, this guide moves on to Edward Said's articulation into a critical approach and finally to postcolonialism's multiple forms in contemporary critical thinking, including theorists such as Bhabha, Spivak, Arif Dirlik and Aijaz Ahmed. Written in jargon-free language and illustrated with examples from literary and cultural texts, this book addresses the many concerns, forms and 'specializations' of postcolonialism, including gender and sexuality studies, the nations and nationalism, space and place, and history and politics.It explains the key ideas, concepts and approaches in what is arguably the most influential and politically edged critical approach in literary and cultural theory today. "Continuum's Guides for the Perplexed" are clear, concise and accessible introductions to thinkers, writers and subjects that students and readers can find especially challenging - or indeed downright bewildering. Concentrating specifically on what it is that makes the subject difficult to grasp, these books explain and explore key themes and ideas, guiding the reader towards a thorough understanding of demanding material.

Postcolonialism as a critical approach and pedagogic practice has informed literary and cultural studies since the late 1980s. The term is heavily loaded and has come to mean a wide, and often bewildering, variety of approaches, methods, politics and ideas. Beginning with the historical origins of postcolonial thought in the writings of Gandhi, Cesaire and Fanon, this guide moves on to Edward Said's articulation into a critical approach and finally to postcolonialism's multiple forms in contemporary critical thinking, including theorists such as Bhabha, Spivak, Arif Dirlik and Aijaz Ahmed. Written in jargon-free language and illustrated with examples from literary and cultural texts, this book addresses the many concerns, forms and specializations' of postcolonialism, including gender and sexuality studies, the nations and nationalism, space and place, history and politics. It explains the key ideas, concepts and approaches in what is arguably the most influential and politically edged critical approach in literary and cultural theory today

Vulnerable Earth is a study of the literature of climate crisis. Building on the assumption that the crisis is planetary in scope even if differential and unequal in effects, it examines literary fiction, graphic novels, memoirs about toxic wastes and neo-slavery narratives, mostly from the contemporary decades, but touching upon select antecedents as well, and from all over the world. The study covers texts that fictionalize a 'hydrocrisis', those that are concerned with species extinction and experimental solutions such as rewilding, fiction and memoirs that are interested in exploring the conversations between and across species in multispecies encounters and, finally, texts that show the linkage between social justice and environmental justice. Focusing on aesthetics, narrative modes and constructions of damaged, wasted and at-risk worlds, this book shows how the literature of climate crisis foregrounds a feature that humans and nonhumans, the living and the non-living share, differentially, with the planet: vulnerability.

Ecoprecarity: Vulnerable Lives in Literature and Culture presents an examination of ecoprecarity - the precarious lives that humans lead in the process and event of ecological disaster, and the increasing precarious state of the environment itself as a result of human interventions - in contemporary literary-cultural texts. It studies the representation of 'invasion narratives' of the human body and the earth by alien life forms, the ecodystopian vision that informs much environmental thought in popular cultures, the states of ontological integrity and genetic belonging in the age of cloning, xenotransplantation and biotechnology's 'capitalisation' of life itself, and the construction of the 'wild' in these texts. It pays attention to the ecological uncanny and the monstrous that haunts ecodystopias and forms of natureculture that emerge in the bioeconomies since the late twentieth century.

Nuclear Cultures: Irradiated Subjects, Aesthetics and Planetary Precarity aims to develop the field of nuclear humanities and the powerful ability of literary and cultural representations of science and catastrophe to shape the meaning of historic events. Examining multiple discourses and textual materials, including fiction, poetry, biographies, comics, paintings, documentary and photography, this volume will illuminate the cultural, ecological and social impact of nuclearization narratives. Furthermore, this text explores themes such as the cultures of atomic scientists, the making of the bomb, nuclear bombings and disasters, nuclear aesthetics and art, and the global mobilization against nuclearization. Nuclear Cultures breaks new ground in the debates on "the nuclear" to foster the development of nuclear humanities, its vocabulary and methodology.

Nuclear Cultures: Irradiated Subjects, Aesthetics and Planetary Precarity aims to develop the field of nuclear humanities and the powerful ability of literary and cultural representations of science and catastrophe to shape the meaning of historic events. Examining multiple discourses and textual materials, including fiction, poetry, biographies, comics, paintings, documentary and photography, this volume will illuminate the cultural, ecological and social impact of nuclearization narratives. Furthermore, this text explores themes such as the cultures of atomic scientists, the making of the bomb, nuclear bombings and disasters, nuclear aesthetics and art, and the global mobilization against nuclearization. Nuclear Cultures breaks new ground in the debates on "the nuclear" to foster the development of nuclear humanities, its vocabulary and methodology.

The Environmental Graphic Novel examines the emerging genre of the environmental graphic novel, examining themes such as climate change through disaster, environmental justice, aesthetics, and melodrama. This book explores a variety of themes and forms within the genre, underscoring how the form encourages and sensitizes readers to ongoing environmental concerns such as climate change, climate disaster, and resistance and resilience, to name a few. The unique genre of the graphic biography of naturalists will also be investigated. Assuming that the eco-apocalyptic is not the sole means of spotlighting climate disaster, this book argues that naturalist memoirs/biographies, disaster and post-disaster texts, and even fables are instrumental in re-animating and re-enchanting the world. The book is well suited to students and researchers interested in the graphic novel, ecological and environmental narratives, and environmental humanities as a whole.

This book is a study of cultures of surveillance, from CCTV to genetic data-gathering and the new forms of subjectivity and citizenship that are forged in such cultures. It studies data, bodies and space as domains within which this subjectivity of the vulnerable individual emerges. The book also proposes that we can see a shift within cultures of surveillance where, from active participation in the process of surveilling, a witness-citizen emerges. The book therefore seeks to alter surveillance as a mere top-down system, instead arguing that surveillance is also a mode of engagement with the world enabling trust, accountability and eventually a responsible humanitarianism.

This new anthology brings together the most diverse and recent voices in postcolonial theory to emerge since 9/11, alongside classic texts in established areas of postcolonial studies. Brings fresh insight and renewed political energy to established domains such as nation, history, literature, and genderEngages with contemporary concerns such as globalization, digital cultures, neo-colonialism, and language debatesIncludes wide geographical coverage – from Ireland and India to Israel and PalestineProvides uniquely broad coverage, offering a full sense of the tradition, including significant essays on science, technology and development, education and literacy, digital cultures, and transnationalismEdited by a distinguished postcolonial scholar, this insightful volume serves scholars and students across multiple disciplines from literary and cultural studies, to anthropology and digital studies