Modernism and the idea of India : the art of passive resistance / Judith Brown.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Brown, Judith (Judith Christine), author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Arts--India.

Arts.

Arts, Indic--India.

Arts, Indic.

Aesthetics, Indic.

Modernism (Aesthetics)--India.

Modernism (Aesthetics).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (x, 196 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2025.

Summary:

In his 1909 manifesto Hind Swaraj, Gandhi made an impassioned call for passive resistance that he soon retracted. 'Passive resistance' didn't, in the end, serve his overarching aims, but was troubled on multiple grounds from its use of the English phrase to the weakness implied by passivity. Modernism and the Idea of India: The Art of Passive Resistance claims that the difficulty embedded in the phrase 'passive resistance', from its seeming internal contradiction to the troubling category of passivity itself, transforms in artistic expression, where its dynamism, ambivalence, and receptivity enable art's capacity to create new forms of meaning. India provides the ground and the fantasy for writers and artists including Rabindranath Tagore, R.K. Narayan, Ahmed Ali, Amrita Sher-Gil, Virginia Woolf, and Le Corbusier. These artists and writers explore the capacities of passive resistance inspired by Gandhi's treatise, but move beyond its call for activism into new languages of art.

Contents:

Cover

Half-title

Title page

Imprints page

Dedication

Table of Contents

List of Figures

Acknowledgments

Introduction

I.1 The Rise and Fall of Gandhian Passive Resistance

I.2 Passivists, Dreamers, Non-players

I.3 The Uses of English

I.4 The Art of Passive Resistance

Chapter 1 Tagore's Emancipated Spectator

1.1 The Royal Post

1.2 The Spectator

1.3 Conceptual Orders

1.4 Passivity and Freedom

1.5 Staging Passive Resistance

Chapter 2 Questions for R. K. Narayan

2.1 Can a World Be Unwritten?

2.2 ''Why Is D a Perfect Letter?''

2.3 ''Is This Naïve or Ironic?''

2.4 ''Why Not Write Poetry?''

2.5 What Is the Fate of Letters?

2.6 What Claim Does the Past Have on the Present?

2.7 What Is the Value of Unwriting?

Chapter 3 Amrita Sher-Gil's Passive Figures

3.1 Portrait of the Artist

3.2 Human Life as Still Life

3.3 Contemplating the Object

3.4 Sensuality and the Object

Chapter 4 Languishing in Ahmed Ali's Delhi

4.1 Delhi's Dying Fall

4.2 Passivity and the Progressive Writers' Association

4.3 Ali's Task as Translator

4.4 Poetry and Pariahs

4.5 Concluding with Pigeons

Chapter 5 Love and Castration in G. V. Desani

5.1 A Parable

5.2 Freud Conquers India

5.3 The Sucker

5.4 Muddledom

5.5 The Comedy of Castration

5.6 Friendship's Aim-Inhibited Form

Chapter 6 Virginia Woolf's Passive Revolution

6.1 Summing Up

6.2 The Intervening World

6.3 The Lines of Global Economy

6.4 From Passive Revolution to Artful Passive Resistance

6.5 To Digress

Chapter 7 Le Corbusier's Impassive Partition Monument

7.1 Modernism and the Radcliffe Line

7.2 Capitol Complex and Esplanade

7.3 Approaching the Monument

7.4 The Iconography of Martyrdom

Works Cited

Index.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 10 Jan 2025).

ISBN:

9781009505239

1009505238

9781009505222

100950522X

9781009505215

1009505211