Locating Indian Literature attempts to explore the category of ‘Indian literature’ in relation to emerging discourses of marginality, region, resistance and the role of translation in the making and unmaking of literary traditions. Interrogating theoretical positions that present Indian literature as an essentialist category, it emphasises the pluralistic and performative elements of Indian literatures. In its first section, E.V. Ramakrishnan articulates the project of ‘provincialising “Indian literature”’ and explores the dialogic interfaces between the abstractions of law and the evaluative role of criticism. It also interrogates the claims of history and the reticence of memories, and the dialectics between the dialect and the region. The second section presents readings of Malayalam literary texts that concretise the plurality of literary traditions. The third section argues for a new approach to the study of texts and traditions with translation forming the fulcrum of cultural and political mediations. Interdisciplinary in its approach, the volume will be of relevance to students and scholars in culture studies, social sciences and humanities.
E.V. Ramakrishnan is Professor of Comparative Literature and Dean in the School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies at Central University of Gujarat, Gandhinagar. A bilingual writer who has published poetry and criticism in Malayalam and English, he is the recipient of Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award for literary criticism (1995). Among his other publications are Narrating India: The Novel in Search of the Nation (2006), Terms of Seeing: New and Selected Poems (2006) and The Tree of Tongues: An Anthology of Modern Indian Poetry (1999).