This volume is a collection of ten essays that direct their gaze to the unfolding of contagions in the non-classical contexts of Asia and Africa. Or, to borrow from the title of one of Partha Chatterjee’s books, they are reflections on the pandemic in most of the world. Featuring many scholars (of the humanities and social sciences) in the Global South, these chapters take as their intellectual focus the political-social as well as the ethical challenges posed by the contagions in the "East." Through analyses of literary narratives/films/video games, this Contagion Narratives traces the manufactured narratives of victimization by majority-communities and the lethal divides consequently being drawn between a reconstituted "authentic majority" and the more vulnerable minority ‘other’ in these societies. The essays in this collection are animated by imaginations of liveable alternatives on a planet on the brink. This volume traces lineages to Buchi Emecheta and Rabindranath Tagore rather than Albert Camus, to Satyajit Ray and the indie traditions rather than Hollywood, and to Buddhism rather than Christianity, to track the historic journeys of "modernity." Using an eclectic set of analytical tools and strategies of textual criticism, this volume argues that ideas of "democracy," even while they carry echoes of other societies, are markedly different as they travel from Gaddafi’s Libya to Wuhan under lockdown to colonial Bengal.
Author(s): R. Sreejith Varma, Ajanta Sircar
Series: Routledge Studies in World Literatures and the Environment
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 194
City: New York
Cover
Half Title
Series Information
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Notes on Contributors
Introduction
Notes
1 Environmental Humanities, Medical Humanities and Pandemic Futures
Notes
Works Cited
2 Re-Seeing Animal Research Ethics in Light of COVID-19
Introduction
How Some Animals Have Fared During the Pandemic
A Quick Outline of Standard Animal Research Ethics
A Buddhist-Infused Animal Research Ethics
Conclusions
Works Cited
3 Remembering That Which Is Yet to Pass
I
II
III
IV
V
Notes
Works Cited
4 COVID-19, Migrant Crisis and Social Contagion of Good Life: A Case Study From Indian Sundarbans
Noticing the Unnoticed
The Drivers of Migration
Indian Sundarbans: An Introduction
An Attempt to Delineate a New Way of Life
A Renewed Definition of Good Life
Vulnerabilities of Migrants in Cities
Post-Lockdown Coping Strategy
Social Contagion and Its Rippling Effects
Acknowledgement
Works Cited
5 Cognition of Contagion: A Study of Video Games
Works Cited
6 The Postcolonial Afterlife in South Africa: AIDS, Xenophobia and Healing in Phaswane Mpe’s Welcome to Our Hillbrow
Note
Work Cited
7 Pathologizing Otherness: Theorizing Parallelisms Between COVID-19 Restrictions and Strands of Otherness in Contemporary …
Introduction
Political Otherness and Madness: Otherized Characters and Victims of COVID-19 Restrictions
Cultural Otherness and Insanity: Violation of Traditional Norms in African Fiction and COVID-19 Season
Conclusion
Works Cited
8 Rabindranath Tagore’s Chaturanga and the Calcutta Plague: Medicine, Modernity and Culture
Notes
Works Cited
9 Narrativizing Disease and Famine On Screen: A Contemporary Reading of Satyajit Ray’s Enemy of the People and Distant ...
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
10 Agricultural Insecurity, Contagion and Rural Adivasi Women: A Consideration of Mahasweta Devi’s “Douloti the Bountiful”
Introduction
Adivasis, Agriculture and Food Insecurity in India
Land, Food and Contagion as Storied Matter
Conclusion
Works Cited
Index
