Description
Book SynopsisAntoinette Burton uses a mid-twentieth-century Indian-American authors career to analyze broader issues of postwar Americas understanding of itself and the wider world.
Trade Review“In
The Postcolonial Careers of Santha Rama Rau, Antoinette Burton produces a notably intelligent and counterintuitive reading of the forgotten and/or trivialized genealogies of colonial/postcolonial cosmopolitanism. Focusing on the career of a putatively minor writer with a complex relationship to the project of decolonization, Cold War politics, U.S. civil rights movements, and corporate publishing, Burton re-inflects the ways we have been accustomed to thinking about gendered professionalism, celebrity status, minoritization, and the history of postcolonial theory. What is most impressive is the way that she manages to make something densely textured and timely out of materials that might otherwise be relegated to antiquarian interest alone.”—Parama Roy, author of
Indian Traffic: Identities in Question in Colonial and Postcolonial India“Once again Antoinette Burton proves to be a trailblazer in the study of imperial culture. Here Burton breaks new ground by forcing us to think anew the place of the postcolonial public intellectual. She takes a risk by focusing on the admittedly ‘minor’ and yet remarkable career of Santha Rama Rau, whose moment of celebrity in the United States was shaped by the particular conjunction of postwar decolonization with Cold War–U.S. imperialism and Nehruvian Indian nationalism. Burton’s dazzling account of Rama Rau’s career, told with characteristic verve and imagination, pays handsome dividends: it offers nothing short of a rich and multilayered genealogy of postcolonial cosmopolitanism. Her virtuoso reading of the production and reception of Rama Rau’s writings provides the mediation between an individual career and the larger social forces of the time.”—Mrinalini Sinha, author of
Specters of Mother India: The Global Restructuring of an EmpireTable of ContentsList of Illustrations vii
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: The East as a Postcolonial Career 1
1. Cold War Cosmopolitanism: The Education of Santha Rama Rau in the Age of Bandung, 1945–1960 32
2. Interpreting British India in Anglo-America: The Cultural Politics of Santha Rama Rau’s
A Passage to India, 1960x2005 71
3. Home to India: Cooking with Santha Rama Rau 109
Epilogue: Cosmopolitanism by Any Other Name 145
Notes 153
Selected Bibliography 195
Index 209
