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book: World Literature for the Wretched of the Earth
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World Literature for the Wretched of the Earth

Anticolonial Aesthetics, Postcolonial Politics
Language: English
Published/Copyright: 2020

About this book

World Literature for the Wretched of the Earth recovers a genealogy of anticolonial thought that advocated collective inexpertise, unknowing, and unrecognizability. Early-twentieth-century anticolonial thinkers endeavored to imagine a world emancipated from colonial rule, but it was a world they knew they would likely not live to see. Written in exile, in abjection, or in the face of death, anticolonial thought could not afford to base its politics on the hope of eventual success, mastery, or national sovereignty. J. Daniel Elam shows how anticolonial thinkers theorized inconsequential practices of egalitarianism in the service of an impossibility: a world without colonialism.

Framed by a suggestive reading of the surprising affinities between Frantz Fanon’s political writings and Erich Auerbach’s philological project, World Literature for the Wretched of the Earth foregrounds anticolonial theories of reading and critique in the writing of Lala Har Dayal, B. R. Ambedkar, M. K. Gandhi, and Bhagat Singh. These anticolonial activists theorized reading not as a way to cultivate mastery and expertise but as a way, rather, to disavow mastery altogether. To become or remain an inexpert reader, divesting oneself of authorial claims, was to fundamentally challenge the logic of the British Empire and European fascism, which prized self-mastery, authority, and national sovereignty.

Bringing together the histories of comparative literature and anticolonial thought, Elam demonstrates how these early-twentieth-century theories of reading force us to reconsider the commitments of humanistic critique and egalitarian politics in the still-colonial present.

An important recovery of the energies offered by anticolonial movements that were neither merely pragmatic nor hopelessly utopian.

Author / Editor information

Contributor: J. Daniel Elam J. Daniel Elam is Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Hong Kong.

Reviews

World Literature for the Wretched of the Earth lays out a novel and provocative argument for an anticolonial mode of reading. Against the usual assumption that entering the scene of world literature entails asserting cultural authority, Daniel Elam shows how anticolonial writers withdraw authority from the singular figure of an author. This aesthetics mines contingency, precariousness and unknowability precisely because it points to a world after colonialism that is not yet in place. Worldly reading, Elam compellingly argues, is not about the formation and cultivation of subjects but the convocation of collectivities for a world to come. Essential reading for those concerned with the future of comparative literature and the world.---Natalie Melas, Cornell University

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    Frontmatter

    i
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    Contents

    v
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    Preface

    vii
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    Introduction: Impossible Subjects

    1
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    1 Lala Har Dayal’s Imagination

    19
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    2 B. R. Ambedkar’s Sciences

    44
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    3 M. K. Gandhi’s Lost Debates

    67
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    4 Bhagat Singh’s Jail Notebook

    92
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    Epilogue: Stopping and Leaving

    113
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    Acknowledgments

    131
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    Notes

    135
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    Bibliography

    169
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    Index

    189
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Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
December 10, 2020
eBook ISBN:
9780823289820
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
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https://doi.org/10.1515/9780823289820
eBook ISBN: 9780823289820
Keywords for this book
anticolonialism; B.R. Ambedkar; Bhagat Singh; comparative literature; critique; Erich Auerbach; Frantz Fanon; Lala Har Dayal; M.K. Gandhi; philology; postcolonial theory; South Asia
Audience(s) for this book
For an expert adult audience, including professional development and academic research
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