Mohan Rakesh, Modernism, And The Postcolonial Present

Abstract Mohan Rakesh, Modernism, and the Postcolonial Present: The fin-de-siécle critical trade union movement of redefining the spatio-temporal boundaries of contemporaneity has lately gathered newlyly momentum by taking up the question of modernisms relation to colonialism and postcolonialism. Appearing at the intersection of modernist studies and postcolonial studies, important recent essays by Simon Gikandi, Susan Stanford Friedman, Ariela Freedman, and others argue for a recovery of the global networks of twentieth-century modernism that is predicated on cultural interflows or else than a unidirectional and hierarchical relation between the Hesperian center and its non-western sandwich peripheries. Linked by the emerging concept of geomodernism, the new approaches, however, continue to privilege Western locations and the European languages, especially English, as the primary sites of modernity, often relegating non-Western spaces and non-Europh whiz works t o the spatial relation of gross art. This essay extends the reach of geomodernism through a raillery of Mohan Rakesh (1925-1972), the iconic post-independence playwright in Indias majority language, Hindi, and one of Indias starring(p) twentieth-century authors, irrespective of genre and language.

As a share of the first gear generation of Indian-language writers whose careers unfolded after political independence in 1947, Rakesh exemplifies m whatever of the larger literary, political, and cultural relations (and ruptures) that are originative to any discussion of Indian modernism-those between colonial and postcolonial modernities, original traditi! ons and Western influences, the Indian languages and English, bourgeois-romantic nationalism and ironic individualism, Left political surmisal and a skeptical humanism, nationalism, and cosmopolitanism, center and periphery, village and city. Approaching him as a paradigmatic figure, the essay first considers the concepts of modernity and modernism as they emerge at the levels of taxonomy, theory, and practice in Indian literature and culture after the mid-nineteenth century, providing a conceptual bod for successive generations of pre- and post-independence writers. It then examines the modernist positions that appear in... If you want to get a full essay, order it on our website: OrderCustomPaper.com

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