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Leela Prasad, "The Audacious Raconteur: Sovereignty and Storytelling in Colonial India" (Cornell UP, 2020)
Leela Prasad, "The Audacious Raconteur: Sovereignty and Storytelling in Colonial India" (Cornell UP, 2020)
ratings:
Length:
33 minutes
Released:
Dec 9, 2020
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
Can a subject be sovereign in a hegemony? Can creativity be reined in by forces of empire?
The Audacious Raconteur: Sovereignty and Storytelling in Colonial India (Cornell UP, 2020) argues that even the most hegemonic circumstances cannot suppress "audacious raconteurs": skilled storytellers who fashion narrative spaces that allow themselves to remain sovereign and beyond subjugation. The book tells the stories of four Indian narrators who lived in colonial India: a Goan Catholic ayah, a Telugu lawyer from the Raju community, a Tamil brahmin archaeologist, and a librarian from the medara (basket-weavers) caste. These four Indian narrators, through their vigorous orality, maverick use of photography, literary ventriloquism, and bilingualism, dismantle the ideological bulwark of colonialism—colonial modernity, history, science, and native knowledge.
This book is open access.
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Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions
The Audacious Raconteur: Sovereignty and Storytelling in Colonial India (Cornell UP, 2020) argues that even the most hegemonic circumstances cannot suppress "audacious raconteurs": skilled storytellers who fashion narrative spaces that allow themselves to remain sovereign and beyond subjugation. The book tells the stories of four Indian narrators who lived in colonial India: a Goan Catholic ayah, a Telugu lawyer from the Raju community, a Tamil brahmin archaeologist, and a librarian from the medara (basket-weavers) caste. These four Indian narrators, through their vigorous orality, maverick use of photography, literary ventriloquism, and bilingualism, dismantle the ideological bulwark of colonialism—colonial modernity, history, science, and native knowledge.
This book is open access.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions
Released:
Dec 9, 2020
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (100)
Elaine Fisher, “Hindu Pluralism: Religion and the Public Sphere in Early Modern South Asia” (U California Press, 2017): Elaine Fisher’s Hindu Pluralism: Religion and the Public Sphere in Early Modern South Asia (University of California Press, 2017) sheds light on the variegated, pluralistic texture of Hinduism in precolonial times. Drawing on Sanskrit, Telugu, by New Books in Indian Religions