On the Problem of Nation(alism): Persistence and Absence in the Indian Post-Colony

Roshan de Silva-Wijeyeratne; Edward Synot

doi:10.1177/17438721211007608

On the Problem of Nation(alism): Persistence and Absence in the Indian Post-Colony

Roshan de Silva-Wijeyeratne (Lead / Corresponding author)
, Edward Synot

Dundee Law School

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

The search for an origin of the nation is destined to remain structured by an aporia that signals the productive irresolution of signification. In a sense, presence is always to arrive in the future, to be made anew. In post-colonial India the Muslim other embodies the ghostly trace of an undecidable figure that characterizes the aporia at the heart of the claim of Hindutva nationalism to a universal purchase on Mother India. The Muslim other then, as the ghost of the undecidable, becomes a metaphor for the fundamental fracture or split in the Hindutva nationalist imaginary, a specter which cannot be resolved and which indeed founds the very (im)possibility of the Hindutva Indian nation itself.

Original language	English
Number of pages	12
Journal	Law, Culture and the Humanities
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1177/17438721211007608
Publication status	E-pub ahead of print - 30 Apr 2021

Keywords

aporia
Colonial archive
ethnographic state
Hindutva nationalism

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Cultural Studies
Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous)
Law

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10.1177/17438721211007608

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abstract = "The search for an origin of the nation is destined to remain structured by an aporia that signals the productive irresolution of signification. In a sense, presence is always to arrive in the future, to be made anew. In post-colonial India the Muslim other embodies the ghostly trace of an undecidable figure that characterizes the aporia at the heart of the claim of Hindutva nationalism to a universal purchase on Mother India. The Muslim other then, as the ghost of the undecidable, becomes a metaphor for the fundamental fracture or split in the Hindutva nationalist imaginary, a specter which cannot be resolved and which indeed founds the very (im)possibility of the Hindutva Indian nation itself.",

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On the Problem of Nation(alism): Persistence and Absence in the Indian Post-Colony

Abstract

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

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