This book analyzes precarious conditions and their manifestations in recent South Asian literature in English. Themes of disability, rural-urban division, caste, terrorism, poverty, gender, necropolitics, and uneven globalization are discussed in this book by established and emerging international scholars. Drawing their arguments from literary works rooted in the neoliberal period, the chapters show how the extractive ideology of neoliberalism invades the cultural, political, economic, and social spheres of postcolonial South Asia. The book explores different forms of “precarity” to investigate the vulnerable and insecure life conditions embodied in the everyday life of South Asia, enabling the reader to see through the rhetoric of “rising Asia”.
Table of Content
Foreword: Precarity and the Human-Nonhuman Interface - Wai Chee Dimock (Yale University, Editor, PMLA).- 1. Introduction - Om Prakash Dwivedi (Bennett University, India).- Part I Infrastructure.- 2. Precarity as a Mode of Enquiry: Arundhati Roy’s
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness and Jeet Thayil’s
Narcopolis - Lisa Lau (University of Keele, UK) and Ana Cristina Mendes (University of Lisbon, Portugal).- 3. Being Filthy Poor in Rising Asia: Precarity, Globalization, and the Evolution of South Asian Literature in English - Neelam Srivastava (Newcastle University, UK).- 4. The Precarious Rule of Aesthetics: Form, Informality, Infrastructure in Urban India - Dominic Davies (City, University of London, UK).- 5. Rural-to-urban Migration and Precarity in
The Story of My Assassins,
Q & A, and
The White Tiger - Robbie BH Goh (National University of Singapore, Singapore).- 6. The Precarity of the Urban Spirit: Abha Dawesar’s
Babyji, Diksha Basu’s
The Windfall, and Vivek Shanbhag’s
Ghachar Ghochar - John C Hawley (Santa Clara University, US).- Part II Body.- 7. Purity, Precarity and Power: Prayaag Akbar’s
Leila - Pramod K Nayar (University of Hyderabad, India).- 8. Drag, and Other Forms of Self-Making in Precarious Times : Yashica Dutt’s
Coming out as Dalit: A Memoir and Bagul, Baburao’s
When I Hid My Cast - Toral Jatin Gajarwala (New York University, US).- 9. “[S]titched Together by Threads of Light”: Perturbatory Narration, Queer Necropolitics and Biopower, and Transversality in Arundhati Roy’s
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness - Alberto Fernández Carbajal (University of Roehampton, UK).- 10. The Precarity and Predatory Behaviour of the ‘Mediahideen’ in Fatima Bhutto’s Isis Novel
The Runaways - Clare Chambers (University of York, UK).- 11. Imagining the Lives of Others: Ethics and Aesthetics of Representing Precarity in Neel Mukherjee’s
A State of Freedom (2017) - Barbara Schmidt-Haberkamp (University of Bonn, Germany).- 12. Pride, Prejudice and Precarity in Sri Lanka: A Reading of Yasmine Gooneratne’s
Sweet and Simple Kind - Feroza Jussawalla.- 13. Why Do They Hate Us So Much? Precarity in Mohsin Hamid’s
The Reluctant Fundamentalist - Adnan Mahmoutovic.- 14. Precarious Culture: Bangladeshi Novels in English And in English Translation - Kaiser Haq (University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh, Bangladesh).
About the author
Om Prakash Dwivedi is Associate Professor of English Literature and Head of the School of Liberal Arts at Bennett University, India. He is the co-author of Re-Orientalism and Indian Writing in English (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). His latest publications include a special issue on “Fractured Identities in Postcolonial and Postapocalyptic Settings: Framing the post-Corona World” (Journal of Postcolonial Writing).
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