Read more
The book addresses the question of the politics of historical production in India, while addressing the pitfalls of postcolonial consciousness in the domain of history-writing.
List of contents
- Preface to the South Asia Edition
- Preface: Reflections on Reflexivity
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: The Instrumentalization of Historiography and the Production of Victimhood
- PART I: MARKING THE POSTS
- 1: Identifying the Beast Within: Postcolonial Theory and History
- 2: Manifesto on Indirections: Histories, Collective Victimhood, and Postcolonialism
- PART II: INSTRUMENTALIZATIONS
- 3: The Revolt of Memory: 1857 in the Nationalist Imagination
- 4: Histories of Empire, Imperial Legitimation, and the Wartime Career of Penderel Moon
- 5: History, Cinema, and the Politics of Cultural Sensitivity in Interwar India
- PART III: POSTDISCURSIVE POSSIBILITIES
- 6: Moving Ideas and How to Catch Them
- 7: Travellers in Archives, or the Possibilities of a Post-PostArchival Historiography
- Afterword: Is There a Discipline to This?
About the author
Benjamin Zachariah read history at Presidency College, Calcutta, and at Trinity College, Cambridge. His published work includes a biography of Nehru (2004), 'Developing India' (2005/2012), 'Nation Games' (2011/2016/2020), and the co-edited volumes 'The Internationalist Moment' (2015) and 'What's Left of Marxism' (2020/2022). He was Reader at the University of Sheffield before moving to Germany where, among other posts, he was Senior Research Fellow at the University of Heidelberg, and at the University of Trier. His research interests centre on historiography and historical thinking in public forums, intellectual histories of the twentieth century, international revolutionary networks, and global fascism.
Summary
The book addresses the question of the politics of historical production in India, while addressing the pitfalls of postcolonial consciousness in the domain of history-writing.
Additional text
'This wide-ranging and polemical study unsettles many settled facts of professional historiography and does so with verve and brilliance. Looking back at the age of post-colonialism, post-modernism, post-truth, and many other posts, Benjamin Zachariah uncovers the self-deceptions, anachronisms, and memory lapses that enable historical narratives as well as styles of history-writing. His book is a salutary reminder of the public duty of the historian, and of history's complicated, but always necessary, relation with evidence and the archive. It should be essential reading.'
