Florian Stadtler – författare

This book analyses the novels of Salman Rushdie and their stylistic conventions in the context of Indian popular cinema and its role in the elaboration of the author’s arguments about post-independence postcolonial India. Focusing on different genres of Indian popular cinema, such as the ‘Social’, ‘Mythological’ and ‘Historical’, Stadtler examines how Rushdie’s writing foregrounds the epic, the mythic, the tragic and the comic, linking them in storylines narrated in cinematic parameters. The book shows that Indian popular cinema’s syncretism becomes an aesthetic marker in Rushdie’s fiction that allows him to elaborate on the multiplicity of Indian identity, both on the subcontinent and abroad, and illustrates how Rushdie uses Indian popular cinema in his narratives to express an aesthetics of hybridity and a particular conceptualization of culture with which ‘India’ has become identified in a global context. Also highlighted are Rushdie’s uses of cinema to inflect his reading of India as a pluralist nation and of the hybrid space occupied by the Indian diaspora across the world. The book connects Rushdie’s storylines with modes of cinematic representation to explore questions about the role, place and space of the individual in relation to a fast-changing social, economic and political space in India and the wider world.

Contemporary events which have catastrophic global ramifications such as the current economic crisis or on-going conflicts across the globe are not only mediated by super-fast digital communication and information networks, but also conditioned by the presence of rapidly advancing technologies. From social network sites like YouTube and Facebook to global satellite news channels like Al Jazeera or the BBC World Service, digital forms of culture have multiplied in recent years, creating global conduits and connections which shape our lives in many ways. Bringing together an interdisciplinary group of scholars, this book addresses how new technologies have impacted discussions of identity, place and nation, and how they are shifting the parameters of postcolonial thought. Each chapter reflects on current research in its respective field, and presents new directions on the interconnection between new technologies and the postcolonial in a contemporary context. Offering a major intervention in debates around global networks, this thought-provoking collection highlights innovative research on new technologies, and its impact on a ‘postcolonial’ world. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Postcolonial Writing.

This book analyses the novels of Salman Rushdie and their stylistic conventions in the context of Indian popular cinema and its role in the elaboration of the author’s arguments about post-independence postcolonial India. Focusing on different genres of Indian popular cinema, such as the ‘Social’, ‘Mythological’ and ‘Historical’, Stadtler examines how Rushdie’s writing foregrounds the epic, the mythic, the tragic and the comic, linking them in storylines narrated in cinematic parameters. The book shows that Indian popular cinema’s syncretism becomes an aesthetic marker in Rushdie’s fiction that allows him to elaborate on the multiplicity of Indian identity, both on the subcontinent and abroad, and illustrates how Rushdie uses Indian popular cinema in his narratives to express an aesthetics of hybridity and a particular conceptualization of culture with which ‘India’ has become identified in a global context. Also highlighted are Rushdie’s uses of cinema to inflect his reading of India as a pluralist nation and of the hybrid space occupied by the Indian diaspora across the world. The book connects Rushdie’s storylines with modes of cinematic representation to explore questions about the role, place and space of the individual in relation to a fast-changing social, economic and political space in India and the wider world.

Contemporary events which have catastrophic global ramifications such as the current economic crisis or on-going conflicts across the globe are not only mediated by super-fast digital communication and information networks, but also conditioned by the presence of rapidly advancing technologies. From social network sites like YouTube and Facebook to global satellite news channels like Al Jazeera or the BBC World Service, digital forms of culture have multiplied in recent years, creating global conduits and connections which shape our lives in many ways. Bringing together an interdisciplinary group of scholars, this book addresses how new technologies have impacted discussions of identity, place and nation, and how they are shifting the parameters of postcolonial thought. Each chapter reflects on current research in its respective field, and presents new directions on the interconnection between new technologies and the postcolonial in a contemporary context. Offering a major intervention in debates around global networks, this thought-provoking collection highlights innovative research on new technologies, and its impact on a ‘postcolonial’ world. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Postcolonial Writing.

Salman Rushdie in Context discusses Rushdie's life and work in the context of the multiple geographies he has inhabited and the wider socio-cultural contexts in which his writing is emerging, published and read. This book reveals the evolving political trajectory around transnationalism, multiculturalism and its discontents, so prominently engaged with by Salman Rushdie in relation to South Asia, its diasporas, Britain, and the USA in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. Focused on the aesthetic, biographical, cultural, creative, historical and literary contexts of his works, the book reveals his deep engagement with processes of decolonization, emergent nationalisms in South Asia, Europe and the USA, and diasporic identity constructions and how they have been affected by globalisation. The book traces how, through his fiction and non-fiction, Rushdie has profoundly shaped the discussion of important questions of global citizenship and migration that continue to resonate today.