Commerce with the Universe - Africa, India, and the Afrasian Imagination

Erscheinungsjahr 2013
ISBN: 978-0-231-16454-2
Verlag: Columbia University Press

Buch, Englisch, 352 Seiten, Format (B × H): 163 mm x 232 mm, Gewicht: 576 g

Reading the life narratives and literary texts of South Asians writing in and about East Africa, Gaurav Desai builds a surprising, alternative history of Africa's experience with slavery, migration, colonialism, nationalism, and globalization. Consulting Afrasian texts that are literary and nonfictional, political and private, he broadens the scope of African and South Asian scholarship and inspires a more nuanced understanding of the Indian Ocean's fertile routes of exchange.

Desai shows how the Indian Ocean engendered a number of syncretic identities and shaped the medieval trade routes of the Islamicate empire, the early independence movements galvanized in part by Gandhi's southern African experiences, the invention of new ethnic nationalisms, and the rise of plural, multiethnic African nations. Calling attention to lives and literatures long neglected by traditional scholars, Desai introduces rich, interdisciplinary ways of thinking not only about this specific region but also about the very nature of ethnic history and identity. Traveling from the twelfth century to today, he concludes with a look at contemporary Asian populations in East Africa and their struggle to decide how best to participate in the development and modernization of their postcolonial nations without sacrificing their political autonomy.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Desai, Gaurav

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Asiatische Geschichte
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften Interdisziplinär Regionalwissenschaften, Regionalstudien
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kultur- und Ideengeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Afrikanische Geschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. Ocean and Narration2. Old World Orders: Amitav Ghosh and the Writing of Nostalgia3. Post-Manichaean Aesthetics: Asian Texts and Lives4. Through Indian Eyes: Travel and the Performance of Ethnicity5. Commerce as Romance: Mehta, Madhvani, Manji6. Lighting a Candle on Mount Kilimanjaro: Partnering with Nyerere7. Anti Anti-Asianism and the Politics of Dissent: M. G. Vassanji's The Gunny SackCoda: Entangled LivesNotesSelected ReferencesIndex

Leseproben

Read the opening chapter, "Ocean and Narration":

Über Autor(innen)

Gaurav Desai is professor in the Department of English and teaches in the Program of African and African Diaspora Studies at Tulane University. He is the author of Subject to Colonialism: African Self-Fashioning and the Colonial Library, editor of Teaching the African Novel, and coeditor of Postcolonialisms: An Anthology of Cultural Theory and Criticism.