
Stock image for illustration purposes only - book cover, edition or condition may vary.
Enlightenment in the Colony: The Jewish Question and the Crisis of Postcolonial Culture
Aamir R. Mufti
€ 49.40
FREE Delivery in Ireland
Description for Enlightenment in the Colony: The Jewish Question and the Crisis of Postcolonial Culture
Paperback. Presents the history of the "Jewish question" to a discussion - one of the social exclusion of religious and cultural minorities in modern times. This title identifies the Hindu-Muslim conflict in India as a colonial variation of what the author calls "the exemplary crisis of minority" - Jewishness in Europe. Num Pages: 344 pages, 1 line illus. BIC Classification: HBTQ; HBTR; JFC. Category: (P) Professional & Vocational; (U) Tertiary Education (US: College). Dimension: 234 x 156 x 20. Weight in Grams: 482.
Enlightenment in the Colony opens up the history of the "Jewish question" for the first time to a broader discussion--one of the social exclusion of religious and cultural minorities in modern times, and in particular the crisis of Muslim identity in modern India. Aamir Mufti identifies the Hindu-Muslim conflict in India as a colonial variation of what he calls "the exemplary crisis of minority"--Jewishness in Europe. He shows how the emergence of this conflict in the late nineteenth century represented an early instance of the reinscription of the "Jewish question" in a non-Western society undergoing modernization under colonial rule. In so doing, he charts one particular route by which this European phenomenon linked to nation-states takes on a global significance. Mufti examines the literary dimensions of this crisis of identity through close readings of canonical texts of modern Western--mostly British-literature, as well as major works of modern Indian literature in Urdu and English. He argues that the one characteristic shared by all emerging national cultures since the nineteenth century is the minoritization of some social and cultural fragment of the population, and that national belonging and minority separatism go hand in hand with modernization. Enlightenment in the Colony calls for the adoption of secular, minority, and exilic perspectives in criticism and intellectual life as a means to critique the very forms of marginalization that give rise to the uniquely powerful minority voice in world literatures.
Product Details
Format
Paperback
Publication date
2007
Publisher
Princeton University Press United States
Number of pages
344
Condition
New
Number of Pages
344
Place of Publication
New Jersey, United States
ISBN
9780691057323
SKU
V9780691057323
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 7 to 11 working days
Ref
99-1
About Aamir R. Mufti
Aamir R. Mufti is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the coeditor of "Dangerous Liaisons: Gender, Nation, and Postcolonial Perspectives" and the editor of "Critical Secularism," a special issue of the journal "boundary 2".
Reviews for Enlightenment in the Colony: The Jewish Question and the Crisis of Postcolonial Culture
"By the late eighteenth-century...the 'protean Jew' was...'neither outsider nor one of us'. Mufti begins with the 'paradigmatic narratives' of minority existence within a liberal nation state...which constituted the so-called Jewish Question in modern Europe. He is especially concerned with the processes of secularization...[and focuses] on the connections between the violent resolution of the 'Jewish Question' and the formation of 'majoritarian' cultures. Mufti [provides] nuanced and historically grounded accounts of the 'Jewish Question'. At a time when these issues have assumed a renewed urgency
under the febrile sign of a 'new' anti-Semitism
[this] outstanding [book offers] a contextualized and scholarly approach to the subject."
Bryan Cheyette, Times Literary Supplement "Aamir Mufti's Enlightenment in the Colony: The Jewish Question and the Crisis of Postcolonial Culture offers the most substantial theoretical intervention, one that is likely to have a significant impact on the field in future years."
New Literatures
under the febrile sign of a 'new' anti-Semitism
[this] outstanding [book offers] a contextualized and scholarly approach to the subject."
Bryan Cheyette, Times Literary Supplement "Aamir Mufti's Enlightenment in the Colony: The Jewish Question and the Crisis of Postcolonial Culture offers the most substantial theoretical intervention, one that is likely to have a significant impact on the field in future years."
New Literatures