CFP: Reading the "Exotic": South Asia and Its Others

Atreyee Phukan and V.G. Julie Rajan, eds.

This volume examines how the notion of exoticism is manifested in the
discourse of South Asia. Since the seventeenth century, the Euro-centric
imaginary has represented South Asia in terms of the sublime and/or the
feminized Other. In the postcolonial context, some native and diasporic
South Asian writers themselves have redirected that trajectory to articulate
the "West" as an exotic space. Alternatively, other writers have sought to
appropriate the trope of the "exotic" as one way of subverting past
orientalist scholarship on the "East." The theoretical and thematic breadth
of postcolonial literature and scholarship today makes it possible to
rethink South Asia as a constantly shifting site in which "exoticism"
represents the new dialogic exchange the region is currently building with
its geographical, political, and cultural "others." Consequently, the
multi-layered dynamic of Otherness that today underscores relations between
South Asia, its diaspora, and the global community highlights the
significance of exoticism in imagining, reading, and articulating
productions and limitations of South Asian subjectivity today.

For this anthology, we are looking for papers that explore articulations and
implications of exoticism in reading what may be construed as the
"phenomenon" of South Asia today globally and within South Asia itself, for
example, through caste, citizenship, gender, and race.

Please send 1 page abstract and 150-word bio by email to julie_at_rajans.org by
September 15, 2006.

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Received on Thu Jun 15 2006 - 08:21:48 EDT