Akhtaruzzaman Elias's look back in anguish: time traveler in search of left utopia.
This essay looks at Akhtaruzzaman Elias' modernist novel Khwabnama as the apex of a narrative arc of left utopia within the ruins of the present, distributed over multiple short stories and one earlier novel. The ennui that suffused this body of work emanated from the author's itinerant affiliation...
| Publicado en: | Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Vol. 25; no. 4; pp. 545 - 564 |
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| Formato: | Essay |
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Taylor & Francis Ltd
Aug2024
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=179273467&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 179273467 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 14649373 B8U jtl: Inter-Asia Cultural Studies issn: 14649373 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Aug2024 vid: 25 iid: 4 pid: 377 pub: Taylor & Francis Ltd artinfo: ui: 179273467 10.1080/14649373.2024.2364559 ppf: 545 ppct: 19 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P size: 1.2MB tig: atl: Akhtaruzzaman Elias's look back in anguish: time traveler in search of left utopia. aug: au: Mohaiemen, Naeem affil: Visual Arts Department, School of Arts, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA su: Time travel Khwabnama (Book) Modernism (Literature) Pakistan Bengal (India) sug: subj: Pakistan Bengal (India) Time travel Khwabnama (Book) Modernism (Literature) keyword: Bangladesh Bengal disappointment independence modernism partition socialism time travel Utopia ab: This essay looks at Akhtaruzzaman Elias' modernist novel Khwabnama as the apex of a narrative arc of left utopia within the ruins of the present, distributed over multiple short stories and one earlier novel. The ennui that suffused this body of work emanated from the author's itinerant affiliation with organized socialist politics, and the sense of disappointment that surrounded the evisceration of that politics within the Pakistan (1947–1970) and Bangladesh (1971–) period of this geography. I explore how Elias developed a distinct literary strategy of resuscitating hope by traveling back to anticolonial uprisings to narrate a time of Hindu-Muslim unity along class solidarity alignments. I look at Elias' peers, who also wrote from within a landscape of postcolonial disappointment. I then spend time with four of Elias' short stories that present a post-independence Bangladesh in which, bereft of external enemies, fratricidal tendencies turn populations against each other. From these short stories, Elias moved to his first novel, Chilekothar Sepai, where he looked at the 1969 Pakistan uprising as a class revolution derailed by bourgeois nationalism. Finally, I look at Khwabnama and think through how Elias wanted to travel far away from the traditional focus of the Bangladeshi historical novel—the 1971 liberation war—to find an earlier anticolonial period where a politics of class solidarity across religious lines could find hopeful purchase. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Essay src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Copyright of Inter-Asia Cultural Studies is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. item: Inter-Asia Cultural Studies holder: Taylor & Francis Ltd dt: @attributes: year: 2024 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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