Imagining Kashmir

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Imagining Kashmir

Emplotment and Colonialism

Patrick Colm Hogan

Frontiers of Narrative Series

294 pages
6 illustrations

Hardcover

October 2016

978-0-8032-8859-1

$60.00 Add to Cart
eBook (PDF)
Ebook purchases delivered via Leaf e-Reader

October 2016

978-0-8032-9489-9

$60.00 Add to Cart
eBook (EPUB)
Ebook purchases delivered via Leaf e-Reader

October 2016

978-0-8032-9487-5

$60.00 Add to Cart

About the Book

During the 1947 partition of the Indian subcontinent, Kashmir—a Muslim-majority area ruled by a Hindu maharaja—became a hotly disputed territory. Divided between India and Pakistan, the region has been the focus of international wars and the theater of political and military struggles for self-determination. The result has been great human suffering within the state, with political implications extending globally.

Imagining Kashmir examines cinematic and literary imaginings of the Kashmir region’s conflicts and diverse citizenship, analyzing a wide range of narratives from writers and directors such as Salman Rushdie, Bharat Wakhlu, Mani Ratnam, and Mirza Waheed in conjunction with research in psychology, cognitive science, and social neuroscience. In this innovative study, Patrick Colm Hogan’s historical and cultural analysis of Kashmir advances theories of narrative, colonialism, and their corresponding ideologies in relation to the cognitive and affective operations of identity.

Hogan considers how narrative organizes people’s understanding of, and emotions about, real political situations and the ways in which such situations in turn influence cultural narratives, not only in Kashmir but around the world.

 
 


 

Author Bio

Patrick Colm Hogan is a professor of English at the University of Connecticut, where he is also on the faculty of the Program in Cognitive Science and the Program in India Studies. He is the author of numerous books, including Understanding Nationalism: On Narrative, Cognitive Science, and Identity and Affective Narratology: The Emotional Structure of Stories (Nebraska, 2011).
 

Praise

“This is an exciting and important book that has no equal in the field. It will be of interest to a range of scholars who work on Kashmir, postcolonialism, cognitive approaches to culture, and conflict resolution.”—Sophia McClennen, professor of comparative literature and international affairs at Pennsylvania State University
 

“A valuable contribution to colonial/postcolonial literary studies as well as cognitive cultural studies.”—Nancy L. Easterlin, professor of women’s studies and gender studies at the University of New Orleans

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Kashmir, Narrative, and the Complexity of Colonialism
1. Understanding Kashmir: Salman Rushdie's Shalimar the Clown
2. Dominant Ideologies and Their Limits:  Four Movies about Kashmir
3. Breaching the Ideological Boundaries: Three Films Not (Apparently) about Kashmir
4. Kashmiri Alternatives: Rival Ideologies in Three Anglophone Novels
5. Colonial Violence and Sub-Colonial Scapegoating: A Poem about Majorities and Minorities
6. Fractured Tales and Colonial Traumas: Disfigured Stories in Kashmiri Short Fiction
Afterword: Ending the Trauma: What Can Be Done?
Notes
Works Cited
Index

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