Supriya Chaudhuri | Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India (original) (raw)
Papers by Supriya Chaudhuri
Oxford University Press eBooks, Oct 22, 2023
Revue des Femmes Philosophes, N° 4-5 / December 2017, 2017
The Form of Ideology and the Ideology of Form, 2022
The Shakespearean International Yearbook, 2017
Modernist Communities across Cultures and Media, 2019
Of all aesthetic movements, modernism most strikingly connects class, coterie, community, cosmopo... more Of all aesthetic movements, modernism most strikingly connects class, coterie, community, cosmopolis, and culture, placing all these terms under the sign of capital. Indeed, global modernity itself, as a working out of capital's social relations, requires us to examine how artistic or literary communities are formed, or aesthetic practices initiated, in specific local contexts where short-lived, often fragmentary ideological alliances also have roles to play. In an important study, Miranda Joseph has contested organicist visions of community, arguing instead that "capitalism and, more generally, modernity depend on and generate the discourse of community to legitimate social hierarchies" (viii; see Waddell 740-42). This is true of colonial societies, but it is also true that writing communities served as sites of resistance and enabled friendships across the colonial divide. Investigating a series of such friendships from the end of the nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth, Leela Gandhi proposes the term "affective community" to describe transnational ethical and intellectual affinities (4-7).
Thinking on Thresholds, 2011
Postcolonial Studies, 2021
The term thoughtcrime (without the hyphen) was proposed by George Orwell in his dystopian fantasy... more The term thoughtcrime (without the hyphen) was proposed by George Orwell in his dystopian fantasy 1984, where it refers to thoughts contrary to state ideology, the mere thinking of which constitutes a punishable offence. In Orwell’s imagined Oceania, a totalitarian state reminiscent both of Nazi Germany and of Stalinist Russia, the detection of such crime is inevitable, since the acts and utterances of all citizens are continuously monitored by the Thought Police through two-way telescreens that disseminate official propaganda while picking up any sound ‘above the level of a very low whisper’. Additionally, there is the possibility of being denounced as a ‘thought-criminal’ by agents who infiltrate all levels of society, starting with the Spies – organized uniformed bands of children resembling Baden-Powell’s Boy Scouts rather more than the Hitler Jugend. Despite the relatively primitive technology of surveillance in Orwell’s socialist dystopia, as compared to the ubiquitous CCTV ca...
Postcolonial Studies, 2021
The term thoughtcrime (without the hyphen) was proposed by George Orwell in his dystopian fantasy... more The term thoughtcrime (without the hyphen) was proposed by George Orwell in his dystopian fantasy 1984, where it refers to thoughts contrary to state ideology, the mere thinking of which constitutes a punishable offence. In Orwell’s imagined Oceania, a totalitarian state reminiscent both of Nazi Germany and of Stalinist Russia, the detection of such crime is inevitable, since the acts and utterances of all citizens are continuously monitored by the Thought Police through two-way telescreens that disseminate official propaganda while picking up any sound ‘above the level of a very low whisper’. Additionally, there is the possibility of being denounced as a ‘thought-criminal’ by agents who infiltrate all levels of society, starting with the Spies – organized uniformed bands of children resembling Baden-Powell’s Boy Scouts rather more than the Hitler Jugend. Despite the relatively primitive technology of surveillance in Orwell’s socialist dystopia, as compared to the ubiquitous CCTV ca...
Recycling Virginia Woolf in Contemporary Art and Literature, 2021
Sporting Cultures, 1650–1850, 2018
Études Épistémè, 2021
Readings of Middleton’s A Game at Chess have tended to focus on its political and historical impl... more Readings of Middleton’s A Game at Chess have tended to focus on its political and historical implications, viewing the chess game itself as an allegorical device that simply presents itself for decoding. Using some insights from Clifford Geertz, this essay makes the game central to a reading of the play. It asks how the game of chess, serving as a fictional space within which characters gamble and cheat for high stakes, operates in relation to its vehicle, Middleton’s play, itself a high-risk enterprise in a political field where art has a stake, but one whose value is never entirely quantifiable. The implicit distinction between a ‘real’ world of political machinations and rivalries where playwrights can be put in prison for commenting on public affairs, and the play-world that occupies the stage or the chessboard is not as straightforward as it appears, since games also take up space in the world, a contested space with ill-defined boundaries. By putting the resources of early modern theatre and its assembling of theatrical publics to use in representing Anglo-Spanish political conflicts, Middleton’s play even anticipates some of the charged, tension-laden atmosphere of a face-off between two opposed ‘sides’ that is characteristic both of modern sport and of modern politics. In both, cheating and gambling have important roles to play.
Literature Compass, 2020
Woolf's own phrase, ‘filamentary relations’, referring to threads or filaments, ‘webs of nerv... more Woolf's own phrase, ‘filamentary relations’, referring to threads or filaments, ‘webs of nerve’, that reach out and touch, but may also snap and break, offers a better metaphor for Woolf's links with India than notions of filiation or affiliation. This essay traces the phrase ‘filaments of the nerve’ to Alexander Bain's The Senses and the Intellect (1855), the first text to mention a ‘stream of consciousness’. I use the trope of the filament to explore the references to India that contextualize characters and histories in Woolf's work, the transnational modernist and anti‐imperial print networks within which she was placed and the threads of connection that Indian writers work into their own texts. But just as the affective range of Woolf's textual filaments is limited by location and ideology, there are breaks and ruptures, too, in the networks of transnational modernism. Nevertheless, postcolonial Indian writers can be seen to look back at Woolf through lines o...
Open Library of Humanities, 2019
Postcolonial Studies, 2019
Tagore and Nationalism, 2017
Beginning with how Tagore’s views on the partly given, partly constructed nature of social identi... more Beginning with how Tagore’s views on the partly given, partly constructed nature of social identity are pertinent to understanding the ideas of selfhood and community, this chapter focuses on the paradoxes of identity in his novels Gora and Ghare Baire. The chapter examines the construction of fictional identities in relation to questions of history, nationhood and the self and relates them with some of the views expressed in the essay ‘Atmaparichay’ (1912), arguing that Rabindranath attempted to understand identity as a form of difference.
Asian Studies Review, 2016
This book examines the status of English Studies in India, aspirations pinned on the subject by s... more This book examines the status of English Studies in India, aspirations pinned on the subject by students, teachers, policy-makers and society in general, and how these are addressed at the higher education level. It presents analytical background discussions of the history and policy environment, and offers open-ended, multi-faceted and multi-vocal accounts of particular aspects of contemporary Indian English Studies, including curriculum, pedagogy, research, employment, relation to Indian vernaculars and translation studies. Reconsidering English Studies in Indian Higher Education is an invaluable source for anyone interested in: •The relevant histories and higher education policies •Professional concerns, including employment, management, teaching and scholarly practices, and negotiations in terms of socio-cultural life •Student attitudes, experiences and aspirations •Management ethos and academic work in a comparative perspective, informed by the situation and debates in the United Kingdom and United States of America •The context of global English Studies and globalization
The International Journal of the History of Sport, 2011
George Bernard Shaw's early romantic novel about a prizefighter, Cashel Byron's... more George Bernard Shaw's early romantic novel about a prizefighter, Cashel Byron's Profession (1882) is possibly the first literary treatment of the risks, compulsions and social hypocrisies surrounding professional sport. It offers a critique of class, work and leisure, of the ...
South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 2012
Abstract In Rabindranath Tagore's novel Gora (1910) and Salman Rushdie's Midnight's C... more Abstract In Rabindranath Tagore's novel Gora (1910) and Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children (1981), literary works which employ the fiction of nativity to examine a paradoxical moment of historical origin, the idea of the nation is subjected to intolerable strain. Fables of identity are constructed in both novels, yet instead of a ‘hardening’ of the metaphysical idea that sustains the allegorical parallel, what we witness is a radical dissolution or disintegration of the categories of nation and narrative at the very site of their inscription. I will argue that in both works, the symbolic equation of novel and nation opens up fissures in historical experience.
Oxford University Press eBooks, Oct 22, 2023
Revue des Femmes Philosophes, N° 4-5 / December 2017, 2017
The Form of Ideology and the Ideology of Form, 2022
The Shakespearean International Yearbook, 2017
Modernist Communities across Cultures and Media, 2019
Of all aesthetic movements, modernism most strikingly connects class, coterie, community, cosmopo... more Of all aesthetic movements, modernism most strikingly connects class, coterie, community, cosmopolis, and culture, placing all these terms under the sign of capital. Indeed, global modernity itself, as a working out of capital's social relations, requires us to examine how artistic or literary communities are formed, or aesthetic practices initiated, in specific local contexts where short-lived, often fragmentary ideological alliances also have roles to play. In an important study, Miranda Joseph has contested organicist visions of community, arguing instead that "capitalism and, more generally, modernity depend on and generate the discourse of community to legitimate social hierarchies" (viii; see Waddell 740-42). This is true of colonial societies, but it is also true that writing communities served as sites of resistance and enabled friendships across the colonial divide. Investigating a series of such friendships from the end of the nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth, Leela Gandhi proposes the term "affective community" to describe transnational ethical and intellectual affinities (4-7).
Thinking on Thresholds, 2011
Postcolonial Studies, 2021
The term thoughtcrime (without the hyphen) was proposed by George Orwell in his dystopian fantasy... more The term thoughtcrime (without the hyphen) was proposed by George Orwell in his dystopian fantasy 1984, where it refers to thoughts contrary to state ideology, the mere thinking of which constitutes a punishable offence. In Orwell’s imagined Oceania, a totalitarian state reminiscent both of Nazi Germany and of Stalinist Russia, the detection of such crime is inevitable, since the acts and utterances of all citizens are continuously monitored by the Thought Police through two-way telescreens that disseminate official propaganda while picking up any sound ‘above the level of a very low whisper’. Additionally, there is the possibility of being denounced as a ‘thought-criminal’ by agents who infiltrate all levels of society, starting with the Spies – organized uniformed bands of children resembling Baden-Powell’s Boy Scouts rather more than the Hitler Jugend. Despite the relatively primitive technology of surveillance in Orwell’s socialist dystopia, as compared to the ubiquitous CCTV ca...
Postcolonial Studies, 2021
The term thoughtcrime (without the hyphen) was proposed by George Orwell in his dystopian fantasy... more The term thoughtcrime (without the hyphen) was proposed by George Orwell in his dystopian fantasy 1984, where it refers to thoughts contrary to state ideology, the mere thinking of which constitutes a punishable offence. In Orwell’s imagined Oceania, a totalitarian state reminiscent both of Nazi Germany and of Stalinist Russia, the detection of such crime is inevitable, since the acts and utterances of all citizens are continuously monitored by the Thought Police through two-way telescreens that disseminate official propaganda while picking up any sound ‘above the level of a very low whisper’. Additionally, there is the possibility of being denounced as a ‘thought-criminal’ by agents who infiltrate all levels of society, starting with the Spies – organized uniformed bands of children resembling Baden-Powell’s Boy Scouts rather more than the Hitler Jugend. Despite the relatively primitive technology of surveillance in Orwell’s socialist dystopia, as compared to the ubiquitous CCTV ca...
Recycling Virginia Woolf in Contemporary Art and Literature, 2021
Sporting Cultures, 1650–1850, 2018
Études Épistémè, 2021
Readings of Middleton’s A Game at Chess have tended to focus on its political and historical impl... more Readings of Middleton’s A Game at Chess have tended to focus on its political and historical implications, viewing the chess game itself as an allegorical device that simply presents itself for decoding. Using some insights from Clifford Geertz, this essay makes the game central to a reading of the play. It asks how the game of chess, serving as a fictional space within which characters gamble and cheat for high stakes, operates in relation to its vehicle, Middleton’s play, itself a high-risk enterprise in a political field where art has a stake, but one whose value is never entirely quantifiable. The implicit distinction between a ‘real’ world of political machinations and rivalries where playwrights can be put in prison for commenting on public affairs, and the play-world that occupies the stage or the chessboard is not as straightforward as it appears, since games also take up space in the world, a contested space with ill-defined boundaries. By putting the resources of early modern theatre and its assembling of theatrical publics to use in representing Anglo-Spanish political conflicts, Middleton’s play even anticipates some of the charged, tension-laden atmosphere of a face-off between two opposed ‘sides’ that is characteristic both of modern sport and of modern politics. In both, cheating and gambling have important roles to play.
Literature Compass, 2020
Woolf's own phrase, ‘filamentary relations’, referring to threads or filaments, ‘webs of nerv... more Woolf's own phrase, ‘filamentary relations’, referring to threads or filaments, ‘webs of nerve’, that reach out and touch, but may also snap and break, offers a better metaphor for Woolf's links with India than notions of filiation or affiliation. This essay traces the phrase ‘filaments of the nerve’ to Alexander Bain's The Senses and the Intellect (1855), the first text to mention a ‘stream of consciousness’. I use the trope of the filament to explore the references to India that contextualize characters and histories in Woolf's work, the transnational modernist and anti‐imperial print networks within which she was placed and the threads of connection that Indian writers work into their own texts. But just as the affective range of Woolf's textual filaments is limited by location and ideology, there are breaks and ruptures, too, in the networks of transnational modernism. Nevertheless, postcolonial Indian writers can be seen to look back at Woolf through lines o...
Open Library of Humanities, 2019
Postcolonial Studies, 2019
Tagore and Nationalism, 2017
Beginning with how Tagore’s views on the partly given, partly constructed nature of social identi... more Beginning with how Tagore’s views on the partly given, partly constructed nature of social identity are pertinent to understanding the ideas of selfhood and community, this chapter focuses on the paradoxes of identity in his novels Gora and Ghare Baire. The chapter examines the construction of fictional identities in relation to questions of history, nationhood and the self and relates them with some of the views expressed in the essay ‘Atmaparichay’ (1912), arguing that Rabindranath attempted to understand identity as a form of difference.
Asian Studies Review, 2016
This book examines the status of English Studies in India, aspirations pinned on the subject by s... more This book examines the status of English Studies in India, aspirations pinned on the subject by students, teachers, policy-makers and society in general, and how these are addressed at the higher education level. It presents analytical background discussions of the history and policy environment, and offers open-ended, multi-faceted and multi-vocal accounts of particular aspects of contemporary Indian English Studies, including curriculum, pedagogy, research, employment, relation to Indian vernaculars and translation studies. Reconsidering English Studies in Indian Higher Education is an invaluable source for anyone interested in: •The relevant histories and higher education policies •Professional concerns, including employment, management, teaching and scholarly practices, and negotiations in terms of socio-cultural life •Student attitudes, experiences and aspirations •Management ethos and academic work in a comparative perspective, informed by the situation and debates in the United Kingdom and United States of America •The context of global English Studies and globalization
The International Journal of the History of Sport, 2011
George Bernard Shaw's early romantic novel about a prizefighter, Cashel Byron's... more George Bernard Shaw's early romantic novel about a prizefighter, Cashel Byron's Profession (1882) is possibly the first literary treatment of the risks, compulsions and social hypocrisies surrounding professional sport. It offers a critique of class, work and leisure, of the ...
South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 2012
Abstract In Rabindranath Tagore's novel Gora (1910) and Salman Rushdie's Midnight's C... more Abstract In Rabindranath Tagore's novel Gora (1910) and Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children (1981), literary works which employ the fiction of nativity to examine a paradoxical moment of historical origin, the idea of the nation is subjected to intolerable strain. Fables of identity are constructed in both novels, yet instead of a ‘hardening’ of the metaphysical idea that sustains the allegorical parallel, what we witness is a radical dissolution or disintegration of the categories of nation and narrative at the very site of their inscription. I will argue that in both works, the symbolic equation of novel and nation opens up fissures in historical experience.