Includes bibliographical references (p. [205]-236) and index. Includes bibliographical references (p. [205]-236) and index.
Contents:
Preface. Autonomy under empire : an 'untimely' feminist critique -- Introduction. Individuation across cultures : the blind spot of postcolonial theory -- Colonial conflicts. Ownership on sexual margins : bodies, national media, and autobiography -- Nation and individuation : manhood and the aesthetics of womanly desire -- Postcolonial globality. Autonomy as reproductive labour : the neoliberal woman and visual networks of empire -- Agency under networks : belonging and privacy in feminist visual culture -- Conclusion : women, decolonization, and autonomy.
Summary:
"Autonomy is commonly linked to liberal individualism, the Enlightenment philosophy which gives primacy to personal existence and interests rather than to the person's place in society and in history. Many see the autonomous individual as harbouring the possessive mentalities of western empire. In this groundbreaking work, Esha Niyogi De radically questions this foundational anti-Enlightenment position on which influential models of Postcolonial critique are based. She argues that the 'individual' has been creatively indigenized in non-western modernities: indigenous activist individuals attentive to empire and gender refuse possessive individualism while they invest in certain ethical premises of Enlightenment thought. De weaves her radical argument through a rich tapestry of gender portrayals drawn from two transitional moments of Indian modernity: the rise of humanism under colony and the influx of neoliberal capitalism. This book emphasizes the feminist challenge to sexual and racial orthodoxies posed by critical imaginations of the 'autonomous woman' in postcolonial cultures by studying autobiographical texts by nineteenth-century Bengali prostituted women; point-of-view photography; woman-centered dance dramas and essays by Rabindranth Tagore; representations of Tagore's works on mainstream television, video, and stage in India and Indian American diasporas; and feminist cinema, choreography and performance respectively by Aparna Sen and Manjusri Chaki-Sircar."--Publisher's website.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.