Anxieties of Empire and the fiction of intrigue / Yumna Siddiqi.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Siddiqi, Yumna.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English fiction--19th century--History and criticism.

English fiction.

English fiction--20th century--History and criticism.

English fiction--South Asian authors--History and criticism.

Intrigue in literature.

Espionage in literature.

Literature and society--Great Britain--History--19th century.

Literature and society.

Literature and society--Great Britain--History--20th century.

Imperialism in literature.

Postcolonialism in literature.

Anxiety in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (303 p.)

Place of Publication:

New York : Columbia University Press, c2008.

Language Note:

English

System Details:

Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Summary:

Focusing on late nineteenth- and twentieth-century stories of detection, policing, and espionage by British and South Asian writers, Yumna Siddiqi presents an original and compelling exploration of the cultural anxieties created by imperialism. She suggests that while colonial writers use narratives of intrigue to endorse imperial rule, postcolonial writers turn the generic conventions and topography of the fiction of intrigue on its head, launching a critique of imperial power that makes the repressive and emancipatory impulses of postcolonial modernity visible.Siddiqi devotes the first part of her book to the colonial fiction of Arthur Conan Doyle and John Buchan, in which the British regime's preoccupation with maintaining power found its voice. The rationalization of difference, pronouncedly expressed through the genre's strategies of representation and narrative resolution, helped to reinforce domination and, in some cases, allay fears concerning the loss of colonial power. In the second part, Siddiqi argues that late twentieth-century South Asian writers also underscore the state's insecurities, but unlike British imperial writers, they take a critical view of the state's authoritarian tendencies. Such writers as Amitav Ghosh, Michael Ondaatje, Arundhati Roy, and Salman Rushdie use the conventions of detective and spy fiction in creative ways to explore the coercive actions of the postcolonial state and the power dynamics of a postcolonial New Empire. Drawing on the work of leading theorists of imperialism such as Edward Said, Frantz Fanon, and the Subaltern Studies historians, Siddiqi reveals how British writers express the anxious workings of a will to maintain imperial power in their writing. She also illuminates the ways South Asian writers portray the paradoxes of postcolonial modernity and trace the ruses and uses of reason in a world where the modern marks a horizon not only of hope but also of economic, military, and ecological disaster.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Colonial Anxieties and the Fiction of Intrigue

2. Imperial Intrigue in an English Country House

3. Sherlock Holmes and "the Cesspool of Empire"

4. The Fiction of Counterinsurgency

5. Intermezzo

6. Police and Postcolonial Rationality in Amitav Ghosh's The Circle of Reason

7. "Deep in Blood"

8. "The Unhistorical Dead"

Conclusion "Power Smashes Into Private Lives"

Notes

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [231]-268) and index.

ISBN:

9780231510868

0231510861

OCLC:

818855912