MULTIPLE MODERNISMS

Book Details:

• Author: Jasbir Jain

• ISBN: 9788131612583

• Language: English

• Edition: 2022

• Pages: 276

• Cover: Hardcover

• Sale Territory: India

• Publisher: Rawat Publications

About the Book:

Multiple Modernisms explores the diversity of the modernist movement and its resurgence across different times and cultures. The term modernism, elusive in its precise definition, represents two key themes that appear throughout history:

1. The attempt to reconcile faith with doubt, belief with non-belief.

2. A resistance to authority and institutional power.

The book delves into the works and ideas of figures such as Luther, Nanak, Descartes, Kierkegaard, and Sartre, who have raised fundamental questions about these themes. Several chapters focus on the relationship between India and Europe, examining the confrontation of ideologies, movements, and revolutions, particularly during the colonial and imperial periods, where structures of power differ greatly.

This exploration reveals how rebellions, protests, and new ideas are deeply rooted in cultural histories, particularly in the context of nineteenth- and twentieth-century revolutions. The book travels from the Enlightenment to Existentialism, touching on philosophy, politics, wars, and revolutions. One of the central themes is the refugee—a figure who destabilizes conventional ideas about family and nation in the modern world.

As the question "What is Modernism?" is asked repeatedly throughout the text, a different answer emerges each time, but at its core, it leads to a confrontation with the lonely human figure in the face of the modern world.

This book is a search for a more comprehensive definition of modernism and its relevance to a broader human society.

Contents:

1. Introduction: Multiple Modernisms

2. Martin Luther and the Protestant Revolution

3. The Dialogicity of Travel: Nanak’s Udasis

4. The Other Face of the Enlightenment: Mary Wollstonecraft and the French Revolution

5. From Madness to Violence: In Pursuit of Modernity

6. The Dialectics of Faith and Non-Faith: Kierkegaard to Sartre

7. The Nineteenth Century in India

8. Explorations in the Historical Subconscious: 19th Century India and After

9. Erasures, Silences, and Recodings: The Writer in Search of Meaning

10. Ethical Revolutionaries: The Generation of the Thirties

11. Locating Gandhi in the History of Ideas

12. Is Storytelling a Game of Chess? Memory, History and Recall

13. Repetition, Difference and Creativity: Borges and Llosa

14. The Making of the Outsider

15. Contrapuntal Narratives: Shifting Paradigms in Comparative Literature

About the Author:

Jasbir Jain is an Emeritus Professor at the University of Rajasthan, Jaipur, and an independent scholar. She has taught at universities in Copenhagen (Denmark) and Tampere (Finland), among others. Jain has received several prestigious awards and fellowships, including the Sahitya Akademi Fellowship (2009) and the UGC Fellowship (2005–2007). She has a rich academic background and a broad range of research interests across languages and genres. Her published works include:

• Interpreting Cinema: Adaptations, Intertextualities, Art Movements (2020)

• Beyond Postcolonialism: Dreams and Realities of a Nation (2019)

• Subcontinental Histories (2018)

• The Diaspora Writes Home (2015)

• Indigenous Roots of Feminism (2011)

• The Writer as Critic (2011)

Jasbir Jain has traveled extensively, engaging deeply with the intellectual landscapes of both the East and West, and she is an expert in Comparative Literature.