Tracing intersecting global genealogies of the new right from the United States to India, this issue focuses on the Right’s attachment to crisis and catastrophe to justify its calls to return to “traditional� social and political structures. The contributors argue that these neotraditionalist countercultural intellectual movements form the basis of global white supremacist political projects that are disseminated through a new media landscape. Articles include discussions of the Right’s favored narratives of political, infrastructural, economic, and ecological crisis and precarity; its reclaiming of nativist politics; birtherist fantasies of US white supremacy; and the political vision of violence as the only remaining mechanism of collective governance available to imagined white minorities. Contributors. April Anson, Anindita Banerjee, Paul A. Bové, Leah Feldman, Olivia Harrison, Aamir R. Mufti, Donald E. Pease 

A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year The idea of world literature has garnered much attention recently as a discipline that promises to move humanistic study beyond postcolonial theory and antiquated paradigms of "national" literary traditions. In Forget English! Aamir Mufti scrutinizes the claims made on behalf of world literature by its advocates. The notion of a borderless, egalitarian global literature has obvious appeal, he notes, but behind it lurks the continuing dominance of English as a literary language and a cultural system of international reach. "Mufti's historical perspective and insightful analyses of India's anglophone novel generate constant echoes with the realities of anglophone writings in other cultures." -Eva Shan Chou, Times Higher Education "Mufti's book is in one sense a quarrel with Salman Rushdie's overly enthusiastic celebration of English-language 'postcolonial' South Asian literature, but more important, the book extends, qualifies, and enriches Edward Said's work on Orientalism, demonstrating that despite its promise, world literature does not eliminate the dominant role of the Anglophone book market in shaping South Asian literature...Mufti's book is both accessible and theoretically informed." -K. Toeloelyan, Choice

"This is a remarkable exploration of the idea of the 'minority.' Through close and historically situated readings of literary and political texts in German, English, and Urdu, Mufti has produced a comparative account of Jewish and Muslim minority-ness in Europe and India that is both dazzling and profound. An outstanding first book from a brilliant young mind."--Partha Chatterjee, Director of the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta

""Enlightenment in the Colony" is a bold and original book which demonstrates the profound link between the 'Jewish question, ' as it tragically unfolds in twentieth-century Europe, and the crisis of partition and of Muslim identity in India. It is one of those arguments that, as soon as it is made, seems at once unanswerable and of unprecedented significance. With impressive erudition, Aamir Mufti grounds his analysis in readings of literary works, from George Eliot's Daniel Deronda to the lyrical poetry of Faiz Ahmed Faiz, which are subtle and persuasive. A major contribution to our understanding of minority cultures, Enlightenment in the Colony should establish Mufti as a key intellectual presence in debates about secularism and postcolonial culture today."--Jacqueline Rose, author of "The Question of Zion"

"A captivating and provocative work of cross-disciplinary and comparative literary scholarship that deploys the critical legacies of the 'Jewish question' in German and English literature to analyze the crisis of postcolonial secularism and Muslim identity in Indian and Pakistani writers. In a series of brilliant readings of dramatic, narrative, and poetic texts, Aamir Mufti posits a vernacular modernity and moves us toward a criticalsecularism that fully captures the fractures and disjunctions of Enlightenment thought that continue to fuel political conflicts in the Middle East and in South Asia today."--Andreas Huyssen, Columbia University, author of "Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory"

"This is a splendid, challenging, major work. Mufti combines rare erudition with great critical intelligence and an attention to major issues. The book carries forward its inquiry by means of two brilliant insights. First, one may both illuminate and reposition the question of communalism within democratic, secular, independent India by recognizing its structural relation and historical connections to the 'Jewish question' within the European liberal Enlightenment. Second, one may further focus the issue by pursuing the evolution of the Urdu language and its literature, as reshaped first in the aftermath of the 1857 rebellion and then by the dual nationalist pressures of India and Pakistan after partition. Mufti's concern with the conditions that make possible, and complex, such a thing as 'minority identity' means that this book will offer resources to students of Palestine, Ireland, and no doubt other tough cases."--Jonathan Arac, University of Pittsburgh, author of "The Emergence of American Literary Narrative, 1820-1860"

At a moment in history when the world seems increasingly drawn into a violent "clash of fundamentalisms," this boundary 2 special issue, Critical Secularism, brings together renowned figures in cultural studies and literary theory to critically rethink the narratives of secularization that characterize modern culture. Implicit within this collection is a consideration of the fate, in the twenty-first century, and in the postcolonial world, of the legacies of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. While recognizing the homogenizing tendencies of post-Enlightenment culture, these scholars collectively militate against a simplistic rejection of the Enlightenment and its theoretical legacies as mere tools of colonization, used to legitimize the domination of various cultural and ethnic "others." Rather, these essays explore the potential that a renewal of secularism has for progressive culture and politics in this historical moment, when religiously inflected politics and violence are escalating around the globe.In this collection, prominent literary and cultural theorists discuss the crisis that secularist theory faces in postcolonial contexts, and-in a recuperative effort-focus on secularism from the perspectives of various marginalized groups (religious and cultural minorities, women, and colonized peoples.). Essays explore secularist expression across a range of cultural and literary texts- from Indian medieval lyrics to the contemporary fiction of the Levant. Other contributors offer critical reevaluations of previous scholarship on secularism, and plumb the relationship between literary criticism/theory and the politics of secularism. Contributors. Emily Apter, Rashmi Bhatnagar, Akeel Bilgrami, Rashmi Dube, Reena Dube, Renu Dube, Bishnupriya Ghosh, Willi Goetschel, Stathis Gourgouris, David M. Halperin, Gil Hochberg, Ronald Judy, Aamir R. Mufti, Edward W. Said, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak