Decolonizing Nationalist Racism? Reflections on travel writing from mid-twentieth century Kerala, India

Datos Bibliográficos

ID3606945
AutoresJ Devika (Centre For Development Studies, autor de correspondencia)
Año2018
Volumen52
Número4
Páginas1316-1346
Fecha de publicación2018-07-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaModern Asian Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0026-749X • E-ISSN: 1469-8099
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0026749x16000548
OpenAlexW2795821401
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas3
Referencias citadas30

This article examines the travel writing of the well-known author from Kerala state, India, S. K. Pottekkatt, who is now recognized as a national literary figure. Recent readings of his African travelogues have pointed to the deep racism that informs them. This article probes further, seeking to place Pottekkatt's ethnocentrism in the context of decolonization, which formed the backdrop of his travels and writing. I argue that Pottekkatt's ethnocentrism also contains a strand which is underpinned by nationalist biopolitics. While we find his writings deeply entrenched in racist colonial stereotypes about native Africans, they are also shaped by nationalist biopolitics that were emerging during decolonization, which led him to strongly condemn prominent groups of Indian immigrants in Africa as well. Dipesh Chakrabarty's reflections on the ambiguities of decolonizing discourses provide a useful springboard for a fresh reading. This preliminary reading of Pottekkatt's African travelogues, however, complicates Chakrabarty's observations about both pedagogic and dialogic modes of decolonizing discourses. It also points to the importance of the regional, and not the national, in the possibilities of South-South dialogue-to which Pottekkatt's accounts point, if only in a cursory manner

Colonialism · Context (archaeology · Decolonization · Dialogic · Ethnocentrism · Nationalism · Political science · Politics · Racism · Reading (process · Sociology · Xenophobia · Anthropology · Gender Studies · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History · Law · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies · Travel Writing and Literature