Decolonizing Nationalist Racism? Reflections on travel writing from mid-twentieth century Kerala, India
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3606945 |
|---|---|
| Authors | J Devika (Centre For Development Studies, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2018 |
| Volume | 52 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 1316-1346 |
| Publication date | 2018-07-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Modern Asian Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0026-749X • E-ISSN: 1469-8099 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0026749x16000548 |
| OpenAlex | W2795821401 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 30 |
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
Belated Travelers
Travel Writing and the Transnational Author
Indians in Kenya
Doctrines Of Development
Imperial Eyes
Tourists with Typewriters
The Global Politics of Contemporary Travel Writing
Recasting women
Women and Social Reform in Modern India
Eclipse of Empire
The Rhetoric of Empire
Imperial Eyes
An agenda for thinking about ‘race’ in development
Colonialism's Culture
The Idea of ‘Africa’ in Indian Nationalism
Popular Culfure and Socio-Religious Reform
Caste and colonial modernity
Thinking race, thinking development
Third Worldism and the lineages of global fascism
The Decolonization Reader
Forgiving the Boundaries
Anticolonial Homelands across the Indian Ocean
Post-development, Foucault and the colonisation metaphor
International Development and the Social Sciences
Beyond the limits of nation and geography
Migration, transnationalism, and modernity
Egalitarian Developmentalism, Communist Mobilization, and the Question of Caste in Kerala State, India
Colonialism's Culture
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,38 |
| Citation span | 2018 - 2026 (9) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |