Document Type

Article

Language

eng

Format of Original

22 p.

Publication Date

Spring 2011

Publisher

Indiana University Press

Source Publication

Journal of Modern Literature

Source ISSN

0022-281X

Original Item ID

doi: 10.2979/jmodelite.34.3.65

Abstract

This essay explores the "aesthetic turn" in postcolonial studies in light of the literary works of Indo-Burmese author Amitav Ghosh. While a renewed interest in aesthetic theories is apparent throughout the humanities in the past decade, it is particularly striking in postcolonial studies, where it holds out the possibility of blending the materialist/historicist and culturalist/textualist strands of postcolonial scholarship. Recent studies by Deepika Bahri, Nicholas Brown, Ato Quayson and others have been enormously promising; this essay argues for bringing their Frankfurt School-influenced aesthetic theories into conversation with other theories of aesthetics. Particular attention in this essay is given to the quasi-Kantian conception of beauty that emerges in Ghosh's The Glass Palace (2001), which seeks to balance the desire for universal norms with the need to respect cultural differences.

Comments

Published version. Journal of Modern Literature, Vol. 34, No. 3 (Spring, 2011): 65-86. DOI. © 2011 Indiana University Press. Used with permission.

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