Baidik Bhattacharya - Postcolonial Writing in the Era of World Literature: Texts, Territories, Globalizations

First published 2018

by Routledge

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2018 Baidik Bhattacharya

The right of Baidik Bhattacharya to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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ISBN: 978-1-138-55995-0 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-429-46772-1 (ebk)

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Every book owes its existence to a group of interlocutors and well-wishers, and for a book that has been in gestation for long this list only increases in length. So is the case with this book. Over the years, I have been discussing parts of it with a broad range of friends, colleagues, and students, and, in hindsight, I can see how much I have benefitted from these conversations. My greatest intellectual debt is to my mentor Rajeswari Sunder Rajan. Her unassuming style, incisive scholarship, and personal generosity set the bar very high from the beginning; and this book, quite literally, would have been impossible without her continued support and inspiration. I have been extremely lucky to have some exceptional teachers and their mark, I hope, would be evident enough in the following pages Rajeev Bhargava, Neeladri Bhattacharya, Bholanath Dasgupta, Ania Loomba, Franson D. Manjali, and Robert J.C. Young. I have also benefitted from my discussions over the years with a group of scholars who are not my teachers formally, but who have taught me a lot through their conversations and writings: Sibaji Bandyopadhay, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Partha Chatterjee, Sukanta Chaudhuri, Supriya Chaudhuri, Tapati Guha-Thakurta, Sudipta Kaviraj, and Udaya Kumar.

I would like to thank the following for their careful reading and useful feedback on various parts of the book G. Arunima, Sayandeb Chowdhury, Patricia Hayes, Aamir R. Mufti, Sambudha Sen, Bodhisattva Kar, Udaya Kumar, Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, Mallarika Sinha Roy, and Sanil V. I have benefitted immensely from their scholarship and generosity. All shortcomings, needless to say, are mine alone.

The research for this book has been done at various libraries of the Universities of Oxford, Newcastle upon Tyne, and Delhi. My sincere thanks to all the brilliant library staff of these institutions.

It has been my good fortune to have wonderful colleagues all along my professional life, with whom I could share not only my ideas but also my excitement about the academic life. At the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, I was particularly fortunate to have Linda Anderson, Michael Pincombe, James Procter, Jennifer Richards, Neelam Srivastava, and Terry Wright as colleagues. At the University of Delhi, I am particularly indebted to Udaya Kumar and Sambudha Sen they welcomed me in the intellectual life of Delhi and also provided the vital support system during difficult times. I also feel lucky to have the intellectual friendship of the following colleagues at Delhi: Tapan Basu, Rimli Bhattacharya, Shirshendu Chakrabarty, Nandini Chandra, Subarno Chattarji, Priya Kumar, Raj Kumar, Rochelle Pinto, and Ira Raja.

It is almost impossible to sustain an academic life without friends, and I want to take this opportunity to thank them all at Oxford: Prathim-Maya Dora-Laskey, Stuti Khanna, Rayhan Rashid, Manav Ratti, Swagato Sarkar, Neelam Srivastava, Nowrin Tamanna, Joy Wang, and Manmay Zafar. And, in keeping with the international community of friends: P.K. Yasser Arafat, Prathama Banerjee, Anna Bernard, Sayandeb Chowdhury, Rajarshi Dasgupta, Veena Hariharan, Bodhisattva Kar, Aishwary Kumar, Premesh Lalu, Aditya Nigam, and Nivedita Sen.

I was lucky enough to have Nitasha Devasar and Shoma Choudhury as my editors at Routledge. Their professional care and interest in the book has been exemplary. I would also like to thank all the support staff at Taylor and Francis for their help and support. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank the two anonymous reviewers for Routledge, whose encouraging words and good-natured criticism of the manuscript have been extremely helpful in preparing the final version.

The bedrock of my life has been my parents, Swapna and Banabir Bhattacharya. Their support has seen through not only this book but also much else in my life this book is for them. The wider support network also includes my parents-in-law, Prabir Sinha Roy and the late Suhita Sinha Roy, and also my extended family in both Jalpaiguri and Kolkata.

And finally, my partner in crime, Mallarika Sinha Roy, who is as much responsible for this book as I am.

Sections from were published in an earlier version in Novel: A Forum on Fiction ( Duke University Press).