Postcolonial Hauntings

Play and Transnational Feminism

Sushmita Chatterjee

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN: 9780252088087, 9780252045981
• eBook ISBN: 9780252047169
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Feminist Literary Criticism
• Index: Social Sciences

Often examined separately, play and hauntings in fact act together to frame postcolonial issues. Sushmita Chatterjee showcases their braided workings in social and political fabrics. Drawing on this intertwined idea of play and hauntings, Chatterjee goes to the heart of conundrums within transnational postcolonial feminisms by examining the impossible echoes of translations, differing renditions of queer, and the possibilities of solidarity beyond the fraternal friendships that cement nation-states. Meaning-plays, or slippages through language systems as we move from one language to another, play a pivotal role in a global world. As Chatterjee shows, an attentiveness to meaning-plays discerns the past and present, here and there, and moves us toward responsive ethics in our theories and activisms.

Insightful and stimulating, Postcolonial Hauntings centers the inextricable work of play and hauntings as a braided ethics for postcolonial transnational struggles.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Becoming Animal, Becoming Transnational
• 2 Translations and Overlapping Belongings: Mapping Queer Transnationalism
• 3 Un-Mithu’s Politics: Lingual Anarchy and Playful Undoings
• 4 Feminist Transnationalism and the Political Dimension of Friendships: Thinking through Mithu Sen’s It’s Good to Be Queen
• 5 Spectral Politics
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index