Focusing on cultural memory in South Asia, this analytical work examines how memories are preserved through speech and gesture. It delves into the diverse reactions of the multilingual subcontinent to European textual influences, highlighting the complexity of memory practices across various cultures. The volume offers insights into the interplay between local traditions and colonial legacies, making it a significant contribution to the understanding of memory in a postcolonial context.
Exploring the interconnectedness of Indian texts and traditions, this book delves into significant Sanskrit works while advocating for a shift away from colonial and postcolonial perspectives. It is structured into three main parts, each highlighting different aspects of India's enduring cultural heritage. Through its analysis, the book seeks to illuminate the rich tapestry of Indian literature and thought, fostering a deeper understanding of its historical and contemporary relevance.
Culture of Memory in South Asia reconfigures European representations of India as a paradigmatic extension of a classical reading, which posits the relation between text and context in a determined way. It explores the South Asian cultural response to European “textual” inheritances. The main argument of this work is that the reflective and generative nodes of Indian cultural formations are located in the configurations of memory, the body and idiom (verbal and visual), where the body or the body complex becomes the performative effect and medium of articulated memories. This work advances its arguments by engaging with mnemocultures-cultures of memory that survive and proliferate in speech and gesture. Drawing on Sanskrit and Telugu reflective sources, this work emphasizes the need to engage with cultural memory and the compositional modes of Indian reflective traditions. This important and original work focuses on the ruptured and stigmatised resources of heterogeneous Indian traditions and calls for critical humanities that move beyond the colonially configured received traditions. Cultures of Memory suggests the possibilities of transcultural critical humanities research and teaching initiatives from the Indian context in today’s academy.
