Empire, Media, and the Autonomous Woman

Book excerpt: Drawing lessons from the intersection of literature, photography, cinema, television, dance-drama, and choreography, this book presents a unique analysis of Indian activist thought spread over two centuries. In this wide-spanning work, Esha Niyogi De argues that the 'individual' has been creatively indigenized in modern non-Western cultures: thinkers attentive to gender in postcolonial cultures embrace selected ethical premises of the Enlightenment and its human rights discourse while they refuse possessive individualism. Debating influential schools of postcolonial and transnational studies, she weaves her radical argument through a rich tapestry of gender portrayals drawn from two moments of modern Indian thought: the rise of humanism in the colony and the growth of new individualism in contemporary liberalized India. From autobiographical texts by nineteenth-century Bengali prostitutes, point-of-view photography, as well as woman-centred dance-dramas and essays by Rabindranath Tagore to representations of Tagore's works on mainstream television, video, and stage; feminist cinema, choreography, and performance by Aparna Sen and Manjusri Chaki-Sircar respectively—the book makes use of these and much more to creatively engage with empire, media, and gender.