MPhil Course Outline January-May 2011 Modernity, Literature and History Dr.

Rochelle Pinto Course Description This course familiarizes students with some of the discussions around the term modernity and will introduce some readings through which it has been absorbed into the study of literature and history. The initial weeks present a European context for the beginning of concern and interest in the condition of modernity. They will provide a few instances where key terms such as enlightenment, reason, rationality will be considered by sociologists, historians and philosophers who trace how these concepts have reshaped thinking about the self and society. The idea of modernity as a social effect, a result of such thought, or the idea of modernity as a projection of the future, a diagnosis of an intellectual and social condition has been explored in these readings. What does the circulation of the term modernity as a widely used concept do to our understanding of theory and practice? Is modernity a historical phenomenon or an intellectual current? Some of the readings listed below explore this. The nineteenth century is often seen as the optimum moment of realization of the many processes and strands of thought that are said to constitute modernity. Scarcely any modern discipline could remain immune to its effect some of the readings query the apparent portmanteau like nature of the term, and its widespread prevalence. What are the points from which a critique of modernity could emerge? The discipline of history was constituted by the consolidation of the idea of history and time in modernity. The hegemonic nature of historical time and the discipline of history is examined in some of the readings. Readings will indicate how what we see as naturalized conceptions of time and history have enabled other social concepts linked to modernity. These show that our encounter with modernity is premised on our understanding of time and history. How did notions of time grow to be dominant in Western Europe? Our reading of literature, and in particular, the phenomenon of literary history could scarcely stand apart from this. While writers such as Hayden White emphasis how the writing of history is embedded in narrative structures, other readings suggest how concepts of history and modernity shape our reading of literary texts, providing a rationale for their writing and for their analysis. The most visible engagement with the methodologies of history has been through the range of writings clubbed under the term New Historicism that suggested the uncertainties of position and methodology as ac its constitutive feature. Prescribed essays indicate how literary studies may read texts that have been canonized as foundational to modern economics. The encounter with these concepts in colonial contexts has produced a range of critiques that touch on the formation of new subjects within literature and history in the colony. Such readings have

emerged from critiques of some of the anthropological, historical and philosophical interpretations of the concepts of time and history. The course provides a crossdisciplinary encounter with these concepts and may help to identify how literary and other texts, practices, and subjects emerge in the context of modernity. Session 1: Modernity and the knowing subject 1. Immanuel Kant, An Answer to the Question: "What is Enlightenment?" , in Practical Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, translated and edited by Mary J. Gregor, 1996, pp. 11-22. 2. Michel Foucault What is Enlightenment?, in Rabinow (P.), ed., The Foucault Reader, New York, Pantheon Books, 1984, pp. 32-50. Session 2: Modernity, progress and its critique 1. Ricoeur, Paul, History as Narrative and Practice, Philosophy Today, 29:3 (1985:Fall) 2. Wilhelm Reich, excerpt from Listen Little Man, Penguin Books, 1983 (1948), USA, pp. 7-42 3. Bernard Yack, Imagining the Modern Age, in The Fetishism of Modernities: Epochal Self-Consciousness in Contemporary Social and Political Thought, Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997, pp. 17-40. Session 3: Modernity as a narrative of progress 1. Dilip Gaonkar, On Alternative Modernities, Public Culture 11(1): 118, 1999 by Duke University Press 2. Shrilal Shukla, Raag Darbari (1968), tr. Gillian Wright (New Delhi: Penguin), chapters 2 and 3. 3. Upendra Baxi, The Recovery of Fire: Nehru and the Legitimation of Power in India Session 4: Other colonies, other modernities 1. Walter D. Mignolo, Coloniality of Power and Subalternity, in Ileana Rodriguez, ed., Latin American Subaltern Studies Reader, Durham: Duke University Press, 2001, pp. 424-444. 2. Wang-Hui, Imagining Asia, A Genealogical Analysis Session 5: Structures of time and history 1. Reinhart Koselleck, Modernity and the Planes of Historicity, in Futures Past, New York: Columbia University Press, 2004, pp. 925.

2. Reinhart Koselleck, History, Histories and Formal Time Structures, in Futures Past, New York: Columbia University Press, 2004, pp. 93-104. Session 6: The structure of narrative 1. Hayden White, Introduction, from Metahistory The Historical Imagination in 19th Century Europe, Baltimore, John Hopkins Press, 1973, pp. 45-80. 2. Excerpts from Frederic Jameson, Preface and On Interpretation: Literature as a Socially Symbolic Act, in The Political Unconscious Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act, pp. 9-14, 17-102. Session 7: The archive and history 1. Anjali Arondekar, In the Wake of 1857: Rudyard Kiplings Mutiny Papers, in For the Record On Sexuality and the Colonial Archive in India, Duke University Press, 2009, pp. 131-170. 2. Roland Barthes The Discourse Of History, translated by Stephen Bann. Comparative Criticism, 3 (1981): 7-20. 3. Catherine Gallagher and Stephen Greenblatt, The Touch of the Real, Practicing New Historicism, The University of Chicago Press, 2000, pp. 1-19 Session 8: Historicising Literature 1. Sheldon Pollock, Introduction, in Literary Cultures in History, pp. 1-36 2. M. Madhava Prasad, The Republic of Babel: Language and Political Subjectivity in Free India Session 9: Modernity and history in the colony 1. Ronald Inden, Orientalist Constructions of India, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 20, No. 3. (1986), pp. 401-446. 2. Ashis Nandy, Historys Forgotten Doubles in Ashis Nandy ed. The Romance of the State, and the fate of Dissent in the Tropics, New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2002, pp. 83-109. 3. Excerpts from Kiran Nagarkars Cuckold Session 10: Producing modern subjects 1. Udaya Kumar, 'Seeing and Reading: The Early Malayalam Novel and Some Questions of Visibility,' in Early Novels in India, Meenakshi Mukherjee ed., Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 2002, pp. 161-192.

2. Excerpts from O. Chandu Menon, Indulekha, trans. Anitha Devasiya, OUP, Delhi, 2005. 3. Dilip Menon, No. Not the Novel Lower Caste Malayalam Novels of the Nineteenth Century, in Early Novels in ndia, Meenakshi Mukherjee ed., Sahitya Akademi, Delhi, 2002. Session 11: Pre-history, history and the other 1. Milind Wakankar, Introduction: the question of a pre-history, Subalternity and Religion the pre-history of Dalit empowerment in South Asia, Routledge, 2010. 2. Ajay Skaria, Notes for a Politics of Hope, Hybrid Histories, Delhi: OUP, 1999, pp. 1-18. Session 12: Time, primitives, the everyday 1. Prathama Bannerjee, Introduction, Politics of Time : Primitives And History-writing in a Colonial Society, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006, 1-39. 2. (Supplementary readings: Prathama Bannerjee, Debt, Time and Extravagance, Politics of Time : Primitives And History-writing in a Colonial Society, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006, pp. 119-157. 3. Prathama Bannerjee, Conclusion, Politics of Time : Primitives And History-writing in a Colonial Society, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006, pp. 236-248.)