In Textual Traffic, S. Shankar clarifies notions of modernity and postmodernity by lucidly examining their relationship to colonialism. In the process, he challenges current emphases in cultural criticism through an exploration of what it means to regard the text as an economy and carries out a detailed scrutiny of travel narratives as a genre.
Paying particular attention to representations of Africa and India, Shankar tracks the historical contours of a colonial modernity in a wide variety of travel narrativesAfrican-American and postcolonial, canonical and filmicdrawn from different periods of the twentieth century. Included are explorations of Joseph Conrads Heart of Darkness, Zora Neale Hurstons Mules and Men, Richard Wrights Black Power, V. S. Naipauls India trilogy, and Stephen Spielbergs Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
In Textual Traffic, S. Shankar clarifies notions of modernity and postmodernity by lucidly examining their relationship to colonialism. In the process, he challenges current emphases in cultural criticism through an exploration of what it means to regard the text as an economy and carries out a d...