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MOBILIZING INDIA
Women in Trinidad Music
by Tejaswini Niranjana |
Overview
The book argues for the importance of comparative research across
the global South. Key terms of contemporary critical analyses - colonialism, nation, modernity,
citizenship, identity, and subjectivity - are often explicated in the bounded context of
nation-states in the South, or with reference to Western European societies. Indeed, an
important feature of twentieth century scholarship could well be the nation-centrism of
the analyses of intellectual formations of the period. My project proceeds on the assumption
that South-South comparative work problematizes the standard use of these terms, and adds new
dimensions to their usage even in specific national contexts.
The attempt is to change the frame of reference so that the "West" doesn't become the sole
norm against which we measure each other. The central focus of the book is "the woman question"
as it emerges through the mobilisation of "Indianness" and other related notions of region,
ethnic group or race. The intertwining of gender issues with the formation and assertion of
different kinds of identities in Trinidad and India is explored. The analysis has a historical
component and a more contemporary one, the latter being routed through popular music in
Trinidad. |
Bibliography 
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About the Book:
One of the signs of our times is the spectacular international
visibility of the "Indian" (from beauty queens to software professionals, technologists, scientists,
artists, economists, film-makers, historians, and literary theorists!). At midcentury, in the age of
Nehruvian socialism and the Non-Aligned Movement, and in the aftermath of the worldwide anti-imperialist
struggle, Indians claimed solidarity with other formerly colonized peoples and extended support of various
kinds to nations less privileged than we were. At the end of the millenium, however, the Indian is not
simply another postcolonial but one who would claim to have attained exceptionality or special status,
an achievement which increasingly sets him off from other inhabitants of other postcolonies. Earlier
axes of identification are transformed and old solidarities disavowed as the middle-class Indian, even as
she vociferously asserts her cultural difference, becomes a crucial relay in the circuits of multinational
capital. Although a good deal of recent critical scholarship has focussed on the formation of the Indian
citizen-subject and analysed the exclusions of caste, community and gender, for instance, which underwrite
it, the subtle changes occurring in the composition of the "Indian" in transnational spaces have yet to
be seriously investigated. The book takes up this project in relation to Trinidad in the Caribbean. |
Chapter 1 
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Afterword
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