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Front Cover

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The Audacious Raconteur: Sovereignty and Storytelling in Colonial India

Author:Leela Prasad
ISBN:9788190995092
Binding:Hardcover
Year:2021
Pages:216 with 17 b/w illustrations
Size:16 x 24 x 2 cm
Weight:468 grams
Price:INR11951076.00
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About the Book
Can a subject be sovereign in a hegemony? Can creativity be reined in by forces of empire? Studying closely the oral narrations and writings of four Indian authors in colonial India, The Audacious Raconteur argues that even the most hegemonic circumstances cannot suppress "audacious raconteurs": skilled storytellers who fashion narrative spaces that allow themselves to remain sovereign and beyond subjugation.

By drawing attention to the vigorous orality, maverick use of photography, literary ventriloquism, and bilingualism in the narratives of these raconteurs, Leela Prasad shows how the ideological bulwark of colonialism—formed by concepts of colonial modernity, history, science, and native knowledge—is dismantled. Audacious raconteurs wrest back meanings of religion, culture, and history that are closer to their lived understandings. The figure of the audacious raconteur does not only hover in an archive but suffuses everyday life. Underlying these ideas, Prasad's personal interactions with the narrators' descendants give weight to her innovative argument that the audacious raconteur is a necessary ethical and artistic figure in human experience.

About the Author
Leela Prasad

Leela Prasad is a Professor of Ethics and Religious Studies at Duke University. She is the awardwinning author of Poetics of Conduct and the codirector of the film Aftertones. Follow her on Twitter @ProfLeelaPrasad
Editorial Reviews



“The Road to Empire is one of the only English-language books to deal with a fascinating subject that gets little attention: the literature produced by the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century court of the Tenth Sikh Guru, Guru Gobind Singh. An excellent contribution to the field.”
—Lou Fenech, author of The Cherished Five in Sikh History
“This is an exciting new work, highly relevant in the field of modern Sikh studies and a must-read for both scholars and laypeople.”
—Pashaura Singh, Distinguished Professor, Department for the Study of Religion, University of California, Riverside
“In this innovative study, Satnam Singh brings to light the complex relationships among the Sikh, Indic, and Islamic literatures that helped shape Sikh conceptions of sovereignty and political theory.”
—Robin Rinehart, Richard H. Jr. ’60 and Joan K. Sell Chair in the Humanities and Professor of Religious Studies, Lafayette College
“I commend Singh on his thorough, rigorous, and groundbreaking research. Articulately expressed, this is an essential source for gaining insight into the development of the Sikh community in the late seventeenth to the late eighteenth century.”
—Opinderjit Kaur Takhar MBE, Director of the Centre for Sikh and Panjabi Studies, University of Wolverhampton
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