Africa in the Indian Imagination: Race and the Politics of Postcolonial Citation - Hardcover

Burton, Antoinette

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0822361485 ISBN 13: 9780822361480

Publisher: Duke University Press Books, 2016

Synopsis

In Africa in the Indian Imagination Antoinette Burton reframes our understanding of the postcolonial Afro-Asian solidarity that emerged from the 1955 Bandung conference. Afro-Asian solidarity is best understood, Burton contends, by using friction as a lens to expose the racial, class, gender, sexuality, caste, and political tensions throughout the postcolonial global South. Focusing on India's imagined relationship with Africa, Burton historicizes Africa's role in the emergence of a coherent postcolonial Indian identity. She shows how—despite Bandung's rhetoric of equality and brotherhood—Indian identity echoed colonial racial hierarchies in its subordination of Africans and blackness. Underscoring Indian anxiety over Africa and challenging the narratives and dearly held assumptions that presume a sentimentalized, nostalgic, and fraternal history of Afro-Asian solidarity, Burton demonstrates the continued need for anti-heroic, vexed, and fractious postcolonial critique.  

About this title

Review:

"Reflecting Antoinette Burton's fearlessness, scholarly dexterity, and shining brilliance, Africa in the Indian Imagination is an impressive achievement. Burton raises important questions on how to approach historical evidence in the writing of imperial histories, while providing a rich, nuanced, and deep account of the tense relations between Indians and Africans as they emerged from colonial relations. A vital book." Author: Renisa Mawani, author of Source: Colonial Proximities: Crossracial Encounters and Juridical Truths in British Columbia, 1871–1921

From the Author:

Antoinette Burton is Professor of History and Catherine C. and Bruce A. Bastian Professor of Global and Transnational Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She has written and edited many books, including Ten Books That Shaped the British Empire: Creating an Imperial Commons, Postcolonial Studies and Beyond, and A Primer for Teaching World History: Ten Design Principles, all also published by Duke University Press.

Isabel Hofmeyr is Professor of African Literature at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg and the author of Gandhi's Printing Press: Experiments in Slow Reading.

About this edition

• Publisher: Duke University Press Books
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0822361485
• ISBN 13: 9780822361480
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 200