Anxieties Of Empire And The Fiction Of Intrigue

Focusing on late nineteenth and twentiethcentury stories of detectionpolicing and espionage by British and South Asian writers Yumna Siddiqipresents an original... » 

Focusing on late nineteenth and twentiethcentury stories of detectionpolicing and espionage by British and South Asian writers Yumna Siddiqipresents an original and compelling exploration of the cultural anxietiescreated by imperialism. She suggests that while colonial writers use narrativesof intrigue to endorse imperial rule postcolonial writers turn the genericconventions and topography of the fiction of intrigue on its head launching acritique of imperial power that makes the repressive and emancipatory impulsesof postcolonial modernity visible.Siddiqi devotes the first part of her book to the colonial fiction of ArthurConan Doyle and John Buchan in which the British regimes preoccupation withmaintaining power found its voice. The rationalization of differencepronouncedly expressed through the genres strategies of representation andnarrative resolution helped to reinforce domination and in some cases allayfears concerning the loss of colonial power.In the second part Siddiqi argues that late twentiethcentury South Asianwriters also underscore the states insecurities but unlike British imperialwriters they take a critical view of the states authoritarian tendencies.Such writers as Amitav Ghosh Michael Ondaatje Arundhati Roy and SalmanRushdie use the conventions of detective and spy fiction in creative ways toexplore the coercive actions of the postcolonial state and the power dynamicsof a postcolonial New Empire.Drawing on the work of leading theorists of imperialism such as Edward SaidFrantz Fanon and the Subaltern Studies historians Siddiqi reveals how Britishwriters express the anxious workings of a will to maintain imperial power intheir writing. She also illuminates the ways South Asian writers portray theparadoxes of postcolonial modernity and trace the ruses and uses of reason in aworld where the modern marks a horizon not only of hope but also of economicmilitary and ecological disaster. «