Commerce With the Universe - Africa, India, and the Afrasian Imagination

Reading the life narratives and literary texts of South Asians writing in East Africa, Gaurav Desai builds a new history of Africa's encounter with slavery, colonialism, migration, nationalism, development, and globalization. Rather than approach literature and culture from a nation-centered perspective, Desai connects the medieval trade routes of the Islamicate empire, the early independence movements galvanized in part by Gandhi's southern African experiences, the invention of new ethnic nationalisms, and the rise of plural, multiethnic nations to the fertile exchange taking place across the Indian Ocean.

List of contents

1. Ocean and Narration2. Old World Orders: Amitav Ghosh and the Writing of Nostalgia3. Post-Manichaean Aesthetics: Asian Texts and Lives4. Through Indian Eyes: Travel and the Performance of Ethnicity5. Commerce as Romance: Mehta6. Lighting a Candle on Mount Kilimanjaro: Partnering with Nyerere7. Anti Anti-Asianism and the Politics of Dissent: M. G. Vassanji's The Gunny SackCoda : Entangled LivesNotesSelected ReferencesIndex

About the author

Gaurav Desai is an associate professor in the Department of English and teaches in the Program of African and African Diaspora Studies at Tulane University.

Summary

Gaurav Desai builds a new history of Africa’s encounter with slavery, colonialism, migration, nationalism, development, and globalization.

Product details

• Authors: Gaurav Desai, Gaurav (University of Michigan) Desai, Gaurav Gajanan Desai, Desai Gaurav
• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 08.10.2013
• EAN: 9780231164542
• ISBN: 978-0-231-16454-2
• No. of pages: 352
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies; Non-fiction book > History > Miscellaneous; Education, LITERARY CRITICISM / General, Africa, LITERARY CRITICISM / African, HISTORY / Africa / East, LITERARY CRITICISM / Asian / Indic, Literary studies: general, African History, HISTORY / Asia / South / General