Ankhi Mukherjee | University of Oxford (original) (raw)
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Papers by Ankhi Mukherjee
Cambridge University Press eBooks, Nov 8, 2023
Oxford University Press eBooks, Jul 14, 2022
This chapter examines the fraught relationship between the discourse of aesthetics and postcoloni... more This chapter examines the fraught relationship between the discourse of aesthetics and postcolonial discourse. In the process, it redefines the meaning of “aesthetics” as it applies to the sense, sensibility, and “dissensus” (Rancière’s term) of postcolonial literature and theory. The chapter argues that this is crucial to reclaim postcolonial studies as either a Bloom-ian school of resentment or what Felski and Anker disparagingly call the “ethos of critique.” The chapter dwells also on what “postcolonial” might mean in this aesthetic reckoning, which acknowledges its political contexts and imperatives without arresting the play and performativity of the literary.
The Yale Review, 2024
My review of Jonathan Kramnick's Criticism and Truth
In this essay, I examine works of literature that present themselves as psychological curiosities... more In this essay, I examine works of literature that present themselves as psychological curiosities by using dreaming as a modality of displaced, unintentional, or even reluctant authorship. What is it to write in, of, or like a dream? Who has the right to dream and who, conversely, is burdened with the nightmare of history? Themes to be considered include: dream-composition and the composition of dreams; narrative vs. lyrical form; the mediation of colonial commodities, like opium or travelogues, as what Nigel Leask calls “psychotropic technology”; artistic autonomy vs. discursive formations of and cultural influences on dream mentation; the yoking of opposites and extremes in the compacted economy of the dream. The literary and critical works discussed are Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan,” Thomas De Quincey’s Confessions of An English Opium-Eater, Charles Dickens’s “An Italian Dream,” Charles Kingsley’s Alton Locke, and Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams
Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 2023
Book review
Textual Practice, 2024
This essay pays mournful tribute to Laura Marcus through a reading of Hilda Doolittle's extrapola... more This essay pays mournful tribute to Laura Marcus through a reading of Hilda Doolittle's extrapolations of Freudian psychoanalysis, an area of scholarship pioneered by Marcus. Examining the dream-like shapes of H.D.'s writing on Freud in Tribute to Freud and her own oneiric experiences in works such as Helen in Egypt, it elaborates on what H.D. called "the hieroglyph of the unconscious," cinematic realms of projection which bear testimony to ineffable events that seem to occur outside of time.
The Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry, 2023
This essay is a response to four peer reviews of Unseen City, touching on the key ideas showcased... more This essay is a response to four peer reviews of Unseen City, touching on the key ideas showcased in each: the move in community psychoanalysis from an authoritative scripting of the cure to elaborations of care; the role of the public clinic in the global city; the post colonial uncanny; the contribution of literature to the psy-disciplines.
Decolonizing the English Literary Curriculum
My chapter in Decolonizing the English Literary Curriculum, co-edited by Ato Quayson and me.
differences
This essay examines singular traumas suffered by Tibetan refugees and expedient and culture-speci... more This essay examines singular traumas suffered by Tibetan refugees and expedient and culture-specific cures for the same. Drawing on Honey Oberoi Vahali’s Lives in Exile and other ethnographic studies of the Tibetan community in Dharamsala, India, it shows how classic trauma theory can be revised and expanded by including the vocabulary and symptomatology of the sufferance of exile and homelessness by displaced Tibetans.
differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, 2023
Analysing the imaginaries and possibilities of psychoanalytic ethnography, this article examines ... more Analysing the imaginaries and possibilities of psychoanalytic ethnography, this article examines instances of singular psychoanalysis at the intersection of “clinical praxis, theory, and social justice,” to quote Daniel José Gaztambide. Working within the frame of psychoanalysis in the community, these will highlight interventions in the psychical lives of those without community and social belonging, or those within a community which is denied legitimacy and liveability by the state.
The Question of the Aesthetic, 2022
This chapter examines the fraught relationship between the discourse of aesthetics and postcoloni... more This chapter examines the fraught relationship between the discourse of aesthetics and postcolonial discourse. In the process, it redefines the meaning of “aesthetics” as it applies to the sense, sensibility, and “dissensus” (Rancière’s term) of postcolonial literature and theory. The chapter argues that this is crucial to reclaim postcolonial studies as either a Bloom-ian school of resentment or what Felski and Anker disparagingly call the “ethos of critique.” The chapter dwells also on what “postcolonial” might mean in this aesthetic reckoning, which acknowledges its political contexts and imperatives without arresting the play and performativity of the literary.
Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, 2022
A critical analysis of Omnia El Shakry's Arabic Freud and Sarah Pinto's The Doctor and Mrs. A.
The Encyclopedia of Literary and Cultural Theory, 2010
Conflicting Humanities, 2016
In this chapter, I examine a singular instance of affective form in postcolonial fiction, which p... more In this chapter, I examine a singular instance of affective form in postcolonial fiction, which puts the body back in the body while also sustaining affect as a virtual substance, a potentiality that exceeds material and formal embodiments. Drawing on the Aminatta Forna's The Memory of Love (2010) and Happiness (2018), I examine key psychoanalytic and psychiatric categories such as PTSD, trauma, fugue, and narrative memory as they are transported globally. Focusing on fraught contexts such as the Sierra Leonian Civil War evoked by Forna, the essay examines the entrenched assumptions and soulmaking politics of Western epistemologies of consciousness, offering the affect of Forna's novels as an alternative depiction of the concrete and abstract materialities of traumatic states.
In this chapter, I examine the intersection of race and class consciousness in Victorian nautical... more In this chapter, I examine the intersection of race and class consciousness in Victorian nautical melodramas.
Cambridge University Press eBooks, Nov 8, 2023
Oxford University Press eBooks, Jul 14, 2022
This chapter examines the fraught relationship between the discourse of aesthetics and postcoloni... more This chapter examines the fraught relationship between the discourse of aesthetics and postcolonial discourse. In the process, it redefines the meaning of “aesthetics” as it applies to the sense, sensibility, and “dissensus” (Rancière’s term) of postcolonial literature and theory. The chapter argues that this is crucial to reclaim postcolonial studies as either a Bloom-ian school of resentment or what Felski and Anker disparagingly call the “ethos of critique.” The chapter dwells also on what “postcolonial” might mean in this aesthetic reckoning, which acknowledges its political contexts and imperatives without arresting the play and performativity of the literary.
The Yale Review, 2024
My review of Jonathan Kramnick's Criticism and Truth
In this essay, I examine works of literature that present themselves as psychological curiosities... more In this essay, I examine works of literature that present themselves as psychological curiosities by using dreaming as a modality of displaced, unintentional, or even reluctant authorship. What is it to write in, of, or like a dream? Who has the right to dream and who, conversely, is burdened with the nightmare of history? Themes to be considered include: dream-composition and the composition of dreams; narrative vs. lyrical form; the mediation of colonial commodities, like opium or travelogues, as what Nigel Leask calls “psychotropic technology”; artistic autonomy vs. discursive formations of and cultural influences on dream mentation; the yoking of opposites and extremes in the compacted economy of the dream. The literary and critical works discussed are Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan,” Thomas De Quincey’s Confessions of An English Opium-Eater, Charles Dickens’s “An Italian Dream,” Charles Kingsley’s Alton Locke, and Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams
Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 2023
Book review
Textual Practice, 2024
This essay pays mournful tribute to Laura Marcus through a reading of Hilda Doolittle's extrapola... more This essay pays mournful tribute to Laura Marcus through a reading of Hilda Doolittle's extrapolations of Freudian psychoanalysis, an area of scholarship pioneered by Marcus. Examining the dream-like shapes of H.D.'s writing on Freud in Tribute to Freud and her own oneiric experiences in works such as Helen in Egypt, it elaborates on what H.D. called "the hieroglyph of the unconscious," cinematic realms of projection which bear testimony to ineffable events that seem to occur outside of time.
The Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry, 2023
This essay is a response to four peer reviews of Unseen City, touching on the key ideas showcased... more This essay is a response to four peer reviews of Unseen City, touching on the key ideas showcased in each: the move in community psychoanalysis from an authoritative scripting of the cure to elaborations of care; the role of the public clinic in the global city; the post colonial uncanny; the contribution of literature to the psy-disciplines.
Decolonizing the English Literary Curriculum
My chapter in Decolonizing the English Literary Curriculum, co-edited by Ato Quayson and me.
differences
This essay examines singular traumas suffered by Tibetan refugees and expedient and culture-speci... more This essay examines singular traumas suffered by Tibetan refugees and expedient and culture-specific cures for the same. Drawing on Honey Oberoi Vahali’s Lives in Exile and other ethnographic studies of the Tibetan community in Dharamsala, India, it shows how classic trauma theory can be revised and expanded by including the vocabulary and symptomatology of the sufferance of exile and homelessness by displaced Tibetans.
differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, 2023
Analysing the imaginaries and possibilities of psychoanalytic ethnography, this article examines ... more Analysing the imaginaries and possibilities of psychoanalytic ethnography, this article examines instances of singular psychoanalysis at the intersection of “clinical praxis, theory, and social justice,” to quote Daniel José Gaztambide. Working within the frame of psychoanalysis in the community, these will highlight interventions in the psychical lives of those without community and social belonging, or those within a community which is denied legitimacy and liveability by the state.
The Question of the Aesthetic, 2022
This chapter examines the fraught relationship between the discourse of aesthetics and postcoloni... more This chapter examines the fraught relationship between the discourse of aesthetics and postcolonial discourse. In the process, it redefines the meaning of “aesthetics” as it applies to the sense, sensibility, and “dissensus” (Rancière’s term) of postcolonial literature and theory. The chapter argues that this is crucial to reclaim postcolonial studies as either a Bloom-ian school of resentment or what Felski and Anker disparagingly call the “ethos of critique.” The chapter dwells also on what “postcolonial” might mean in this aesthetic reckoning, which acknowledges its political contexts and imperatives without arresting the play and performativity of the literary.
Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, 2022
A critical analysis of Omnia El Shakry's Arabic Freud and Sarah Pinto's The Doctor and Mrs. A.
The Encyclopedia of Literary and Cultural Theory, 2010
Conflicting Humanities, 2016
In this chapter, I examine a singular instance of affective form in postcolonial fiction, which p... more In this chapter, I examine a singular instance of affective form in postcolonial fiction, which puts the body back in the body while also sustaining affect as a virtual substance, a potentiality that exceeds material and formal embodiments. Drawing on the Aminatta Forna's The Memory of Love (2010) and Happiness (2018), I examine key psychoanalytic and psychiatric categories such as PTSD, trauma, fugue, and narrative memory as they are transported globally. Focusing on fraught contexts such as the Sierra Leonian Civil War evoked by Forna, the essay examines the entrenched assumptions and soulmaking politics of Western epistemologies of consciousness, offering the affect of Forna's novels as an alternative depiction of the concrete and abstract materialities of traumatic states.
In this chapter, I examine the intersection of race and class consciousness in Victorian nautical... more In this chapter, I examine the intersection of race and class consciousness in Victorian nautical melodramas.