Representations of Precarity in South Asian Literature in English

“In its diverse explorations of the intersections between precarity and neoliberalism in South Asian fiction, this exciting collection redraws the cultural imaginary of the region. It also confirms the everydayness of precarity and precariousness as mutating and crossing all socio-geographic boundaries at a time when social and economic inequality continues. As compelling studies of vulnerability to the threat of precarity and forms of resilience, these essays testify to the growing need to understand such conditions.” --Professor Janet M. Wilson, University of Northampton, UK This book analyzes precarious conditions and their manifestations in recent South Asian literature in English. Themes of disability, rural-urban division, caste, terrorism, poverty, gender, necropolitics, and uneven globalization are discussed in this book by established and emerging international scholars. Drawing their arguments from literary works rooted in the neoliberal period, the chapters show how the extractive ideology of neoliberalism invades the cultural, political, economic, and social spheres of postcolonial South Asia. The book explores different forms of “precarity” to investigate the vulnerable and insecure life conditions embodied in the everyday life of South Asia, enabling the reader to see through the rhetoric of “rising Asia”. Om Prakash Dwivedi is Associate Professor of English Literature and Head of the School of Liberal Arts at Bennett University, India. He is the co-author of Re-Orientalism and Indian Writing in English (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). His latest publications include a special issue on “Fractured Identities in Postcolonial and Postapocalyptic Settings: Framing the post-Corona World” (Journal of Postcolonial Writing).