Columbus' imaginary: A critique of post-colonial identity

This study examines the construction and negotiation of post-colonial identity in everyday life. Specifically, it addresses the mechanisms and practices by which a community of immigrants to the U.S. from the Indian subcontinent comes to terms with its self-representation(s). The analysis uses ethnography as a mode of theorizing problems of experience and subjectivity in the context of a globalized world. The project is poised at the interstices of critical theory, post-colonial scholarship, and marxist cultural criticism. The overall attempt is to account for the ways in which domains of daily life both constrain and enable the emergence of a particular formation of post-colonial subjecthood within the metropolitan location of the United States. The study thus seeks to intervene in contemporary debates on the status of 'local' discourses (of, for example, identity and experience) in the constitution of global subjectivities. It also proposes that the consolidation of post-colonial identity represents a vexed case in current discussions of the predicament of modernity.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Communication

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2011

Author dc:creator

• Ganguly, Keya

Contributors dc:contributor

• Grossberg, Lawrence

• Anthropology, Cultural
• Mass Communications

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 1994 Ganguly, Keya

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

AAI9512367
(UMI)AAI9512367

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/23101