BEYOND POSTCOLONIALISM: dreams and realities of a nation (Second Edition)

Book Details

• ISBN: 9788131609996

• Publication Year: 2019

• Pages: 374 pages

• Binding: Hardback

• Sale Territory: India

• Publisher: Rawat Publications

About the Book

Beyond Postcolonialism: Dreams and Realities of a Nation challenges the frameworks that postcolonialism applies to multi-language Indian literature. By focusing on power and resistance, postcolonialism tends to obscure the indigenous inheritance of India and marginalizes the continuous experimentation within literature, which reflects a dynamic dialogue with culture, politics, and language.

This volume offers a deep study of the Indian novel from 1947 to the present, extending into the early twenty-first century across multiple languages. During these decades, Indian literature has seen significant shifts in narrative structures, engaging with various art movements, as well as reflecting the complexities of location, space, caste, and community — all of which continue to shape our epistemological frameworks.

The novelistic form serves both as a historical record and as a counter-discourse, constantly revealing and critiquing the hidden layers of history through its narrative voice. It examines the dreams of freedom, the division of the country, and the violence that accompanied it. The study also looks into diasporic writing, gender issues, feminism, classical aesthetics, oral storytelling traditions, and even the rhythms of sound and listening. It calls for new interpretative strategies and highlights the need for recognizing fresh tropes within Indian literature.

Key Contents:

• Prologue: From the Personal to the Political

• Resisting the Empire

• Splitting of the National Subject

• Falls the Shadow: Division and Exile

• Patriarchy in the Mirror

• Transformational Strategies: Home and Abroad

• Experiential versus Classical Aesthetics

• The End of the Twentieth Century and the Beginning of the Twenty-First

• Epilogue: Cultural Texts and Contexts

• Postscript: The Limits of Postcolonialism and the Need to Go Beyond

About the Author / Editor

Jasbir Jain is an Emeritus Fellow at the University of Rajasthan and has received numerous prestigious accolades, including the Sahitya Akademi Fellowship as Writer in Residence, K.K. Birla Fellowship, and many other awards. She has also taught at various international universities, including in Copenhagen (Denmark) and Tampere (Finland).

Jain's extensive research interests span various languages and genres. She has authored several notable books, including Indigenous Roots of Feminism (2011), Theorising Resistance (2012), The Diaspora Writes Home (2015), Forgiveness: Between Memory and History (2016), Bridge Across the Rivers (2017), and Subcontinental Histories: Literary Reflections on the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (2018).