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Ghostly Past, Capitalist Presence
A Social History of Fear in Colonial Bengal
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Tithi Bhattacharya
Language:
English
Published/Copyright:
2024
About this book
In Ghostly Past, Capitalist Presence, Tithi Bhattacharya maps the role that Bengali ghosts and ghost stories played in constituting the modern Indian nation, and the religious ideas seeded therein, as it emerged in dialogue with European science. Bhattacharya introduces readers to the multifarious habits and personalities of Bengal’s traditional ghosts and investigates and mourns their eventual extermination. For Bhattacharya, British colonization marked a transition from the older, multifaith folk world of traditional ghosts to newer and more frightening specters. These "modern" Bengali ghosts, borne out of a new rationality, were homogeneous specters amenable to "scientific" speculation and invoked at séance sessions in elite drawing rooms. Reading literature alongside the colonial archive, Bhattacharya uncovers a new reordering of science and faith from the middle of the nineteenth century. She argues that these shifts cemented the authority of a rising upper-caste colonial elite who expelled the older ghosts in order to recast Hinduism as the conscience of the Indian nation. In so doing, Bhattacharya reveals how capitalism necessarily reshaped Bengal as part of the global colonial project.
Author / Editor information
Tithi Bhattacharya is Associate Professor of History at Purdue University, author of The Sentinels of Culture: Class, Education, and the Colonial Intellectual in Bengal, 1848–1885, and coauthor of Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto.
Reviews
“The best account I have yet read of the enchanted and uncanny world of stories and beliefs that Bengalis like myself grew up in.”
-- Amitav Ghosh
“This strikingly original study returns ghosts, long unjustly neglected, back to their rightful place at the heart of the history of Bengali colonial modernity. By a fascinating series of literary, historical, and theoretical analyses, it reveals colonial reason’s obsession with the irrational and presents the narrative of replacement of decorous magical ghosts of premodernity by new forms of the uncanny and monstrous lodged in the disenchanted structures of capitalist economies and modern nation-states.”
-- Sudipta Kaviraj, Professor of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies, Columbia University
"Readers already knowledgeable about this period in Indian history will especially appreciate the sophistication of Bhattacharya’s work. Recommended. Graduate students and faculty."
-- M. H. Fisher Choice
-- M. H. Fisher Choice
Topics
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Uncanny Histories: Ghosts, Fear, and Reason in Colonial Bengal Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed |
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Old Ghosts and Their Advocates in an Age of Enlightenment Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed |
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Haunted Homes and Haunting Histories Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed |
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New Spirits, New Rituals Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed |
97 |
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130 |
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Thinking about Ends and Beginnings Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed |
155 |
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159 |
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Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
July 24, 2024
eBook ISBN:
9781478059691
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook ISBN:
9781478059691
Keywords for this book
Spiritualism; Occultism; indigenous ghosts; Brahmadaitya; planchet; séance; Scientific Spiritualism; Gothic; colonial science; capitalist modernity; Bhadralok; Bhut; Petni; Antonio Gramsci; caste; folklore; syncretism; Satya Pir; Banabibi; community healers; ghost doctors; goddess worship; Tantra; Sisir Kumar Ghosh; Amritabazar Patrika; Pearychand Mitra; Aloukik Rahasya; Hindu Spiritual Magazine; Hindu Science; neo-Hinduism; haunted houses; spatiality; domesticity; history; Freud; Tagore; Manihara; capital punishment; colonial sanitation; cremation; Gadkhali ghost; cholera; epidemics; Birth and Death Registration Act of 1873; colonial governability; Indian Rope Trick; British ghosts; Orientalism; Society for Psychical Research; Theosophical Society; Helena Petrovna Blavatsky; Henry Steel Olcott; Annie Besant; Women’s Indian Association; Brahmoism; Vaishnavism; nationalism; Indian National Congress
Audience(s) for this book
For an expert adult audience, including professional development and academic research
