Rag-pickers, boxers, dilettantes
The literary activism of Amit Chaudhuri and Arvind Krishna Mehrotra
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 22422531 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Laetitia Zecchini (Délégation Normandie, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Pages | 1-29 |
| Publication date | 2026-07-13 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Interventions (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1369-801X • E-ISSN: 1469-929X |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/1369801x.2026.2681424 |
| OpenAlex | W7168176548 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 7 |
This essay examines the intertwined literary and critical trajectories of Amit Chaudhuri and Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, two writer-critics and “allies” whose roles in (re)shaping the field of Indian literature today are unparalleled. Framed by Theodor Adorno’s conception of the essay as an anti-dogmatic, experimental form, I read both authors as practitioners of a distinctive form of literary activism, understood as the entanglement between activism on behalf of literature, through literature, and as literature. This activism is consubstantial to literary craft, and connected to certain genres, like the essay, or to specific critical and editorial practices. Through a close reading of a wide range of texts, and several interviews or conversations, I look at the activism of both writers as a means to clear a space and expand the scope of visibility beyond unexamined colonial, postcolonial, or nationalist paradigms. This “widening of space” is all at once a critical intervention as well as an aesthetic and a politics. The figures of the boxer, the dilettante, and the rag-picker illuminate Mehrotra’s and Chaudhuri’s effort to reinvent the possibilities of literature, criticism, and activism. Beyond the writers’ struggle to sustain a plural and provocative critical culture – which, in a country where the “culture of respect” paves the way for censorship, is also a prerequisite for other kinds of freedoms – there is a deeply dissident dimension in their revaluation of the multiplicities and minorities, that constitute our worlds, our texts, and ourselves; in the openness of their essays that dismantle fictions of totality.
Narrative · Poetry · Work (physics) · Indian History and Philosophy · South Asian Cinema and Culture · South Asian Studies and Diaspora
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |