Mobilizing India: Women, Music, and Migration between India and Trinidad (Paperback)

Mobilizing India: Women, Music, and Migration between India and Trinidad Book Description

About the Book:
The book argues for the importance of comparative research across the global South. Key terms of contemporary critical analyses - colonialism, nation, modernity, citizenship, identity, and subjectivity - are often explicated in the bounded context of nation-states in the South, or with reference to Western European societies. Indeed, an important feature of twentieth century scholarship could well be the nation-centrism of the analyses of intellectual formations of the period. The project proceeds on the assumption that South-South comparative work problematizes the standard use of these terms, and adds new dimensions to their usage even in specific national contexts. The attempt is to change the frame of reference so that the "West" does not become the sole norm against which we measure each other. The central focus of the book is "the woman question" as it emerges through the mobilization of "Indianness" and other related notions of region, ethnic group or race. The intertwining of gender issues with the formation and assertion of different kinds of identities in Trinidad and India is explored. The analysis has a historical component and a more contemporary one, the latter being routed through popular music in Trinidad.
About the Author(s):
Tejaswini Niranjana has been visiting the Caribbean for over a decade. She is a scholar of popular culture and music in Jamaica and Trinidad, and has most recently (2004) been to the islands to help make a film on musical collaborations between the Indian singer Remo Fernandes and Caribbean musicians. She has lectured at the University of the West Indies, Mona and St. Augustine Campuses, on cultural studies, feminist theory, colonialism and translation. Tejaswini has a Master's degree from Bombay University and a PhD from University of California, Los Angeles. She taught at the University of Hyderabad (1988-1998) before helping to found the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, Bangalore. In Hyderabad, she was a member of Anveshi Research Centre for Women's Studies which provided the context for her questions in those years. She is part of the editorial collective of the journal Inter-Asia Cultural Studies which incorporates South-South insights in formulating perspectives from Asia. Tejaswini is also a well-known translator: she has translated Pablo Neruda and Shakespeare into Kannada, and several Kannada novels and shorter fiction into English.

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