1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910462995203321

Autore

Desai Gaurav Gajanan

Titolo

Commerce with the universe : Africa, India, and the Afrasian imagination / / Gaurav Desai

Pubbl/distr/stampa

New York : , : Columbia University Press, , 2013

ISBN

0-231-53559-7

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (313 p.)

Disciplina

891/.1

Soggetti

Indic literature - History and criticism

National characteristics, East Indian, in literature

East African literature (English) - History and criticism

East Indians - Africa, East

Electronic books.

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Ocean and narration -- Old world orders: Amitav Ghosh and the writing of nostalgia -- Post-manichaean aesthetics: Asian texts and lives -- Through Indian eyes: travel and the performance of ethnicity -- Commerce as romance: Mehta, Madhvani, Manji -- Lighting a candle on Mount Kilimanjaro: partnering with Nyerere -- Anti anti-Asianism and the politics of dissent: M. G. Vassanji's The gunny sack -- Coda: Entangled lives.

Sommario/riassunto

Reading the life narratives and literary texts of South Asians writing in and about East Africa, Gaurav Desai builds a surprising, alternative history of Africa's experience with slavery, migration, colonialism, nationalism, and globalization. Consulting Afrasian texts that are literary and nonfictional, political and private, he broadens the scope of African and South Asian scholarship and inspires a more nuanced understanding of the Indian Ocean's fertile routes of exchange.Desai shows how the Indian Ocean engendered a number of syncretic identities and shaped the medieval trade routes of the Islamicate empire, the early independence movements galvanized in part by Gandhi's southern African experiences, the invention of new ethnic nationalisms, and the rise of plural, multiethnic African nations. Calling



attention to lives and literatures long neglected by traditional scholars, Desai introduces rich, interdisciplinary ways of thinking not only about this specific region but also about the very nature of ethnic history and identity. Traveling from the twelfth century to today, he concludes with a look at contemporary Asian populations in East Africa and their struggle to decide how best to participate in the development and modernization of their postcolonial nations without sacrificing their political autonomy.