ABOUT THIS BOOK
Postcolonial Disaster studies literary fiction about crises of epic proportions in contemporary South Asia and Southern Africa: the oceanic disaster in Sri Lanka, the economic disaster in Zimbabwe, the medical disaster in South Africa and Botswana, and the geopolitical disaster in India and Pakistan. Pallavi Rastogi argues that postcolonial fiction about catastrophe is underpinned by a Disaster Unconscious, a buried but mobile agenda that forces disastrous events to narrate themselves. She writes that in disaster fiction, a literary Story and its real-life Event are in constant dialectic tension. In recent disasters, Story and Event are tied together as the urgency to circulate information and rebuild in the aftermath of the disaster dictates the flow of the narrative. As the Story acquires temporal distance from the Event, such as the seventy-three years since the partition of India in 1947, it plays more with form and theme, to expand beyond a tale about an all-consuming tragedy. Story and Event are in a constant dance with each other, and the Disaster Unconscious plays the tune to which they move.
Rastogi creates a narratology for postcolonial disaster fiction and brings concepts from Disaster Studies into the realm of literary analysis.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHYPALLAVI RASTOGI is an associate professor of English at Louisiana State University. She is the author of Afrindian Fictions: Diaspora, Race, and National Desire in South Africa.
REVIEWS“Articulating a persuasive theory of the disaster unconscious, Pallavi Rastogi’s narratology of postcolonial disaster fiction highlights the ways in which literary texts attempt to redress disasters on both aesthetic and pedagogical registers. Through a set of close readings that revivify some of the foundational concerns of postcolonial theory—including the centrality of the nation-state—this book at the same time retools postcolonial studies to address newly emerging challenges. A must-read.” —Gaurav Desai, author of Commerce with the Universe: Africa, India and the Afrasian Imagination
“Pallavi Rastogi reanimates the core concerns of postcolonial studies about social and political justice by outlining a disaster unconscious of twenty-first century literature from Southern Africa and South Asia. Rastogi shows how old questions are new again as the many disasters of the twenty-first century—from nuclear war to AIDS to economic collapse to earthquakes and tsunamis—entail an urgent rethinking of crisis, catastrophe, narrative, and healing.” —Yogita Goyal, author of Romance, Diaspora, and Black Atlantic Literature
“As climate change deepens planetary compound crises—of unstable markets, poor crop yields, new pandemics, and refugee displacement—this book’s examination of time, narrative, and disaster will remain essential reading for years to come.” —Treasa De Loughry, Wasafiri
“Disaster fiction, in Rastogi’s impressive and commanding analysis, is not a sensationalist thrill ride, but a surprising route to the core concerns of anticolonial art and politics.” —Liam O’Loughlin, Journal of Postcolonial Writing
“Postcolonial Disaster . . . engages with and articulates contemporary forms of the originary concerns of postcolonial theory, and pushes back on mostly accepted ideas of canon formation. Truly a book for our times.” —Meghan Gorman-DaRif, South Asian Review
“Rastogi’s . . . focus on the pedagogical aspect of disaster stories . . . is particularly compelling in our current disaster ridden historical moment. Postcolonial Disaster teaches us how to read such stories—and especially their fictional counterparts—as aesthetic objects and as crucial tools for future survival. As much as scholars of postcolonial literature, disaster, trauma, narratology, and environmental humanities (among others) will find Rastogi’s text instructive, so might the casual reader of contemporary fiction. As timely as Rastogi’s book is now, it promises only to become more so as we push forward into an increasingly climate-changing world.” —Carolyn Ownbey, Safundi: The Journal of South African and American Studies
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction. Postcolonial Disaster: Narrating Catastrophe in the Twenty-First Century
Part 1. Explosion
Chapter 1. Tsunami Stories: Writing Out the Wave in the Oceanic Disaster
Part 2. Slow Burn
Chapter 2. “Better Fed than Free”: Buying Out of the Economic Disaster
Chapter 3. Ripping Off the BandAIDS: Dying Out in the Medical Disaster
Part 3. Simmer
Chapter 4. War of the Words: Fighting Out the Geopolitical Disaster
Coda. Catastrophes of the Now: (B)Reaching Out of the Refugee Disaster
Notes
Bibliography
Index
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
It can take 2-3 weeks for requests to be filled.