Examines representations of surplus enjoyment in postcolonial literature and film to focus on self-other relations rather than difference.
Postcolonial Lack reconvenes dialogue between Lacanian psychoanalysis and postcolonial theory in order to expand the range of cultural analyses of the former and make the latter theoretically relevant to the demands of contemporary narratives of othering, exclusion, and cultural appropriation. Seeking to resolve the mutual suspicion between the disciplines, Gautam Basu Thakur draws out the connections existing between Lacan’s teachings on subjectivity and otherness and writings of postcolonial and decolonial theorists such as Gayatri Spivak, Frantz Fanon, and Homi Bhabha. By developing new readings of the marginalized other as radical impasse and pushing the envelope on neoliberal identity politics, the book moves postcolonial studies away from the perennial topic of identity and difference and into examining the form and function of the other as excess―surplus and/or lack―in colonial and postcolonial literature, film, and social discourse. Looking at writings by Mahasweta Devi, Amitav Ghosh, Leila Aboulela, Narayan Gangopadhyay, Katherine Boo, and films by Gillo Pontecorvo , Clint Eastwood, Ryan Coogler (Black Panther), and Tony Gatlif, Basu Thakur highlights a new set of ethical and political considerations emerging as a direct result of this shift and stakes a fundamental rethinking of postcoloniality through what he calls the “politics of ontological discordance.”
Author(s): Gautam Basu Thakur
Series: (SUNY series, Insinuations: Philosophy, Psychoanalysis, Literature)
Publisher: SUNY Press
Year: 2020
Language: English
Pages: 276
Tags: Literary Criticism, Literary Theory, Postcolonialsim
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
I. To Begin (a Difficult Conversation)
II. The Postcolonial Samizdat
III. Postcolonial is Dead; Reimagining Postcolonial Studies
IV. Spivak’s Love Letter
V. Intimate Enemies, Postcolonial Studies, and Psychoanalysis
VI. Structure of the Book
Postscript
I. Author Names
II. The Other and the Other
Chapter One The Subaltern Act of Freedom
I. Subalternity and Freedom
II. The Subaltern Act
III. The Subaltern Act And Lacan’s Theory Of The Act
IV. The Wedge Of Unreasonable Uncertainty
V. The Hole In The Real Versus The Real Thing
VI. Draupadi’s Act
VI. Conclusion: The Act Is Without A Future
Chapter Two Postcolonial. Animal. Limit.
I. The Postcolonial Animal
II. The Postcolonial Animal 1: The Empirical Impossibility Of The Pterodactyl
III. Postcolonial Animal 2: “a Strangeness Beyond Reckoning”
IV. Inhabiting A Translated World: The Animal as Surplus in Postcolonial Literature
V. The Secret Life of Pets: The Neoliberal Fantasy of Animals
VI. Who’s Afraid of the Anthropocene?
Chapter Three Hysterization of Postcolonial Studies; or, Beyond Cross-Cultural Communication
I. We do not Want What we Desire.
II. The Fantasy of the Archive7
III. The Impossibility of Falling in Love: Leila Aboulela’s “The Museum”
The Impossibility of Unlearning
The Impossibility of Communication
The Othering of Brian
What does Shadia Want?
IV. The Hysteric’s Desire and the Discourse of the Hysteric
Hysterization of Postcolonial Studies
V. Gadjo Dilo and the Problem of Reading
Finding Luca
The Problem of Communication
The Impossibility of Knowing
VI. The Problem with Apu
VII. Exploding the Archive
Chapter Four Fictions of Katherine Boo’s Creative Non-fiction, or, The Unbearable Alterity of the Other
I. Postcolonial Studies In The Global Era
II. The Fictions of Katherine Boo’s Nonfiction
The Fiction of Form
What Makes Amartya Sen Happy?
III. Reading Boo, Postcolonially
IV. The Successive Caveats
V. Subject-making in the Global Present
V. Conclusion: The Desolate Universal of Slums
“The Bone Collector”
The Lion Has Wings
Can Boo Speak?
Chapter Five Political Correctness Is Phallic: Idaho Politics, Black Panther, and Gran Torino
I. Idaho Politics and the Liberal Fixation with the Image
II. Black Panther: The Illusion of Division
Fantasy I: The Vel of Wakanda
Fantasy II: Wakanda and Binu-r Bari (binu’s Home); or, How to Read Killmonger
Fantasy III: Superhero as the One
III. Gran Torino: from the Imaginary to the Symbolic
The Polack, His Italian Barber, and a Chink
The other is Absent!
Empty Speech Versus Full Speech
The Ideology of Gran Torino I: The Hmong Gang
The Ideology of Gran Torino II: The One
IV. Political Correctness is Phallic
Can the White Man Speak?
Conclusion: Particular Universal
Notes
Works Cited
Index
