Is postcolonial theory passé? Recuperating habits of reading, printing and print culture in the early realm of print in colonial Bengal, India (1780-1820).

This is a call for papers for a collection that will look at new theoretical interventions on dominant notions of postcolonial theory.

Keeping in mind the recently published, innovative scholarship on the nature of colonial print in India, which draws attention to the multilingual, heteroglossic aspects of imperial print that emerged in the late 18th century, where natives were eager participants in this realm (for example, Tapati Bharadwaj's Imperial print in colonial Calcutta (1780-1820): a realm of early print. The emergence of heteroglossia in print and society), this collection of essays aims to address the need to re-examine the fundamental premises of postcolonial theory: to what extent were the natives complicit in the processes of colonization? We know for a fact that the natives never challenged, questioned or rejected the advent of print in colonial India, that was part and baggage of East India Company sponsored British colonization. Infact, the Brahmins and the educated Bengalis were eager to accept the technology and were fascinated as a new epistemic shift took place; therefore, one is at a loss to explain as to how these natives can be, in this instance, considered as being passive.

The image of the passive native is a dominant motif in postcolonial theory; in Masks of Conquest, Literary Study and British Rule in India, Gauri Viswanath's writes that the discipline of English was part of the "imperial mission of educating and civilizing colonial subjects in the literature and thought of England, a mission that in the long run served to strengthen Western cultural hegemony in enormously complex ways." According to her, "a great deal of strategic manoeuvring went into the creation of a blueprint for social control in the guise of a humanistic program of enlightenment." Postcolonial theory takes as a premise that the natives were passive idiots.

This collection aims to look at the habits of print and textual consumption in the early realm of print culture in colonial India, and doing so will allow us to question the dominant assumptions of postcolonial theory which border on being nonsensical.

Deadline for abstract submission: May 1st, 2015.

For more information, please write to the following: liesandbigfeet@gmail.com.