Rajeswari Sunder Rajan – författare

An essential addition to the postcolonial debate which offers a challenging mode of `reading resistance' which destroys the stereotyped and sensationalised humanist image of the `third world woman' as victim.

An essential addition to the postcolonial debate which offers a challenging mode of `reading resistance' which destroys the stereotyped and sensationalised humanist image of the `third world woman' as victim.

This volume offers a unique contribution to both postcolonial studies and Austen scholarship by:* examining the texts to illumine nineteenth century attitudes to colonialism and the expanding Empire* revealing a new range of interpretations of Austen's work, each shaped by the critic's particular context* exploring the ways in which the study of Austen's novels raises fresh issues for post-colonial criticism.Bringing together work by highly-respected critics from four continents and a range of disciplines, this newly paperbacked volume allows sometimes surprising and always fascinating new insights into some of the most frequently studied - and best loved - novels in the English language.

This volume offers a unique contribution to both postcolonial studies and Austen scholarship by:* examining the texts to illumine nineteenth century attitudes to colonialism and the expanding Empire* revealing a new range of interpretations of Austen's work, each shaped by the critic's particular context* exploring the ways in which the study of Austen's novels raises fresh issues for post-colonial criticism.Bringing together work by highly-respected critics from four continents and a range of disciplines, this newly paperbacked volume allows sometimes surprising and always fascinating new insights into some of the most frequently studied - and best loved - novels in the English language.

The Scandal of the State is a revealing study of the relationship between the postcolonial, democratic Indian nation-state and Indian women’s actual needs and lives. Well-known for her work combining feminist theory and postcolonial studies, Rajeswari Sunder Rajan shows how the state is central to understanding women’s identities and how, reciprocally, women and “women’s issues” affect the state’s role and function. She argues that in India law and citizenship define for women not only the scope of political rights but also cultural identity and everyday life. Sunder Rajan delineates the postcolonial state in implicit contrast with the “enlightened,” postfeminist neoliberal state in the West. Her analysis wrestles with complex social realities, taking into account the influence of age, ethnicity, religion, and class on individual and group identities as well as the shifting, heterogeneous nature of the state itself.The Scandal of the State develops through a series of compelling case studies, each of which centers around an incident exposing the contradictory position of the Indian state vis-À-vis its female citizens and, ultimately, the inadequacy of its commitment to women’s rights. Sunder Rajan focuses on the custody battle over a Muslim child bride, the compulsory sterilization of mentally retarded women in state institutional care, female infanticide in Tamilnadu, prostitution as labor rather than crime, and the surrender of the female outlaw Phoolan Devi. She also looks at the ways the Uniform Civil Code presented many women with a stark choice between allegiance to their religion and community or the secular assertion of individual rights. Rich with theoretical acumen and activist passion, The Scandal of the State is a powerful critique of the mutual dependence of women and the state on one another in the specific context of a postcolonial modernity.

While secularism has been integral to India’s democracy for more than fifty years, its uses and limits are now being debated anew. Signs of a crisis in the relations between state, society, and religion include the violence directed against Muslims in Gujarat in 2002 and the precarious situation of India’s minority religious groups more generally; the existence of personal laws that vary by religious community; the affiliation of political parties with fundamentalist religious organizations; and the rallying of a significant proportion of the diasporic Hindu community behind a resurgent nationalist Hinduism. There is a broad consensus that a crisis of secularism exists, but whether the state can resolve conflicts and ease tensions or is itself part of the problem is a matter of vigorous political and intellectual debate. In this timely, nuanced collection, twenty leading Indian cultural theorists assess the contradictory ideals, policies, and practices of secularism in India. Scholars of history, anthropology, religion, politics, law, philosophy, and media studies take on a broad range of concerns. Some consider the history of secularism in India; others explore theoretical issues such as the relationship between secularism and democracy or the shortcomings of the categories “majority” and “minority.” Contributors examine how the debates about secularism play out in schools, the media, and the popular cinema. And they address two of the most politically charged sites of crisis: personal law and the right to practice and encourage religious conversion. Together the essays inject insightful analysis into the fraught controversy about the shortcomings and uncertain future of secularism in the world today.Contributors. Flavia Agnes, Upendra Baxi, Shyam Benegal, Akeel Bilgrami, Partha Chatterjee, V. Geetha, Sunil Khilnani, Nivedita Menon, Ashis Nandy, Anuradha Dingwaney Needham, Gyanendra Pandey, Gyan Prakash, Arvind Rajagopal, Paula Richman, Sumit Sarkar, Dwaipayan Sen, Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, Shabnum Tejani, Romila Thapar, Ravi S. Vasudevan, Gauri Viswanathan

The texts that make up postcolonial print cultures are often found outside the archival catalogue, and in lesser-examined repositories such as personal collections, the streets, or appendages to established collections. This volume examines the published and unpublished writing, magazines, pamphlets, paratexts, advertisements, cartoons, radio, and street art that serve as the intellectual forces behind opposition to colonial orders, as meditations on the futures of embryonic nation states, and as visions of new forms of equality. The print cultures examined here are necessarily anti-institutional; they serve as a counterpoint to the colonial archive and, relatedly, to more traditional genres and text formats coming out of large-scale publishers. This means that much of the primary material analyzed in this book has not been scrutinized before. Many of these print productions articulate collective liberation projects with origins in the grassroots. They include debates around the shape of the postcolonial nation and the new state formation that necessarily draw on a diverse and contentious public sphere of opinion. Their rhetoric ranges from the reformist to the revolutionary. Reflecting the diversity, indeed the disorderliness, of postcolonial print cultures this book covers local, national, and transnational cultures from Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas. Its wide-ranging essays offer a nuanced and, taken together, a definitive (though that is not to say comprehensive or systematic) study of a global phenomenon: postcolonial print cultures as a distinct literary field. The chapters recover the efforts of writers, readers and publishers to produce a postcolonialism ‘from below’, and thereby offer a range of fresh perspectives on the meaning and history of postcolonialism.