Skip to main content

Bloomsbury Home

Description

This book explores the aesthetic forms of the political left across the borders of post-colonial, post-partition South Asia. Spanning India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh, the contributors study art, film, literature, poetry and cultural discourse to illuminate the ways in which political commitment has been given aesthetic form and artistic value by artists and by cultural and political activists in postcolonial South Asia.

With a focused conceptualization this volume asks: Does the political left in South Asia have a recognizable aesthetic form? And if so, what political effects do left-wing artistic movements and aesthetic artefacts have in shaping movements against inequality and injustice? Reframing political aesthetics within a postcolonial and decolonised framework, the contributors detail the trajectories and transformations of left-wing cultural formations and affiliations and focus on connections and continuities across post-1947/8 India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Notes on Contributors

Introduction: Forms of the Left in Postcolonial South Asia
Lotte Hoek and Sanjukta Sunderason

Chapter 1
A Melancholic Archive: Chittaprosad and Socialist Art in Postcolonial India
Sanjukta Sunderason

Chapter 2
Kagmari Festival, 1957: Political Aesthetics and Subaltern Internationalism in Pakistan
Layli Uddin

Chapter 3
Between Neorealism and Humanism: Jago Hua Savera
Iftikhar Dadi

Chapter 4
Lotus Roots: Transposing a Political-Aesthetic Agenda from South Asia to Afro-Asia
Maia Ramnath

Chapter 5
What got “left” behind: The limits of Leftist Engagements with Art and Culture in Post-colonial Sri Lanka
Harshana Rambukwella

Chapter 6
The Conscience Whipper: Alamgir Kabir's Film Criticism and the Political Velocity of the Cinema in 1960s East Pakistan
Lotte Hoek

Chapter 7 Look Back in Angst: Akaler Sandhaney, the Indian New Wave, and the Afterlife of the IPTA Movement Manishita Dass

Afterword, Kamran Asdar Ali

Bibliography
Index

Product details

Bloomsbury Academic Test
Published 18 Jan 2022
Format Paperback
Edition 1st
Extent 320
ISBN 9789354352058
Imprint Bloomsbury Academic
Illustrations 21 bw illus
Dimensions 234 x 153 mm
Series Critical Perspectives in South Asian History
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

About the contributors

SS
Anthology Editor

Sanjukta Sunderason

Sanjukta Sunderason is Senior Lecturer (UD1), in…

LH
Anthology Editor

Lotte Hoek

Lotte Hoek is Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropolo…

Reviews

  • A first of its kind, this volume liberates the history of the left in South Asia. Focussing on 'form', the left is reconvened as an aesthetic force seeking to reshape our sensory and material being. In the face of aggressive nationalist aesthetics, Forms of the Left offers a critical alternative.

    Prathama Banerjee, Professor, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi, India

  • In this richly variegated volume on the artistic lineages of left radicalism, the question of form takes on political urgency and heft, inviting us to imagine other futures than current political dispensations allow. Keenly attuned to political-aesthetic potentialities, Forms of the Left is a milestone contribution to global histories of the left.

    Usha Iyer, Assistant Professor, Film and Media Studies, Stanford University, USA

ONLINE RESOURCES

Bloomsbury Collections

This book is available on Bloomsbury Collections where your library has access.

Go to this book on Bloomsbury Collections.

Environment: Staging