Rewriting nation-state: borderland literatures of India and the question of state sovereignty【翻译】

ABSTRACT
This project studies the paradoxical juxtaposition of the modern nation-state’s
guarantee of life and security to its citizenry, along with the spectacular (encounter
killings, torture chambers and cells) and banal (border control practices, population
policies) forms through which it exercises the power over life and death in the sphere of
everyday life in particular borderland areas. I argue that a study of exceptional locales
like India’s eastern borderlands elaborates the paradox of state sovereignty in two ways:
first, it illustrates that so-called “margins,” like colonies and borderlands, are necessary
for the institution of modern state sovereignty, and second, it enables a critical scrutiny of
the function of forms of violence as essential tools of modern governmentality. India’s
eastern borderlands are a crucial locale for such an inquiry because they lie at the
crossroads of the three area-studies formations of South, Southeast and East Asia. The
institutionalization of the official borders of the nation-states that rim this region—India,
China, Myanmar, Bangladesh and Bhutan—are comparatively recent historical
developments. Specters of pre-nation-statist spatial connections still survive in the region,
and often come into conflict with modern state technologies such as citizenship laws and
statutes regulating cross-border socioeconomic contacts among people. The central focus
of my project is on post-1980 Anglophone and local language literary fictions by Amitav
Ghosh, Siddhartha Deb, Parag Das and Raktim Xarma. These fictions demonstrate how
the eastern borderlands are figured in popular Indian discourse as a “state of nature” that
occupy a position of being both inside the rationalized territorial body of the nation-state
and outside the regime of normalized law and order. Focusing on figures as diverse as
2
bureaucrats, army officials, journalists, guerrillas and refugees (among others), they show
how socio-historical changes over a longue durée, and the practices and policies
employed by the state apparatus, coalesce to produce new modalities of subjectivity and
politics in these zones of exception in the Indian nation-state.
Abstract Approved: ____________________________________
Thesis Supervisor
____________________________________
Title and Department
____________________________________
Date
REWRITING NATION-STATE: BORDERLAND LITERATURES OF INDIA AND
THE QUESTION OF STATE SOVEREIGNTY
by
Amit Rahul Baishya
A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the Doctor of
Philosophy degree in English
in the Graduate College of
The University of Iowa
July 2010
Thesis Supervisor: Associate Professor Priya Kumar
Graduate College
The University of Iowa
Iowa City, Iowa
CERTIFICATE OF APPROVAL
_______________________
PH.D. THESIS
_______________
This is to certify that the Ph.D. thesis of
Amit Rahul Baishya
has been approved by the Examining Committee
for the thesis requirement for the Doctor of Philosophy
degree in English at the July 2010 graduation.
Thesis Committee: ___________________________________
Priya Kumar, Thesis Supervisor
___________________________________
Claire Fox
___________________________________
Garrett Stewart
___________________________________
Barbara Eckstein
___________________________________
Virginia R. Dominguez
ii
To Danny and Bedanta. You are still remembered.
iii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The ideas explored in this dissertation have their roots in innumerable breakfast table
conversations between me and my parents. Mum and Dad, I still don’t agree with a
majority of things that you say. But without those disagreements, this dissertation would
never have taken form. I also thank the five teachers for forcing and pushing me to think
differently: G.J.V Prasad, Neeladri Bhattacharyya, Priya Kumar, Claire Fox and Virginia
Dominguez. I attended two excellent summer seminars that helped me chisel and fine
tune the ideas I develop here. I thank Elizabeth Povinelli for the many stimulating and
thought-provoking conversations and exchanges on sovereignty and the security state
during my brief sojourn in Ithaca in Summer 2008. Garrett Stewart’s seminar on narrative
theory in Summer 2009 in Iowa City reminded me that close attention to narrative form
and genre solidified and strengthened my explorations of the realm of the political. I also
appreciate Barbara Eckstein’s help and suggestions at different stages of the project. Paul
Greenough supported me tremendously over the years—I am grateful to him for his help.
I am privileged to have had an excellent set of friends and interlocutors along the years in
places as far apart as New Delhi, Iowa City and Ithaca. I especially thank Suvadip Sinha,
Saikat Ghosh, Young Cheon Cho, Alessandra Madella, Sangeet Kumar, Ben Basan, Li
Guo, Sucheta Mallick, Vinu Warrier, Swarnavel Pillai, Balmurli Natrajan, Andreea
Marculescu, Desmond Jagmohan, Karine Côte-Boucher, Sally Booth, Ricky Varghese,
Puspa Damai, Bimbisar Irom, Vasudha Bharadwaj, Ana Hontanilla and Gladys Illaregui
for many thought-provoking (and oftentimes raucous) conversations on many of the
issues discussed here. Finally, and most importantly, I thank my brother, Anirban, for his
wicked and inexhaustible sense of humor, and Andreea for all her encouragement and
support.
iv
ABSTRACT
This project studies the paradoxical juxtaposition of the modern nation-state’s
guarantee of life and security to its citizenry, along with the spectacular (encounter
killings, torture chambers and cells) and banal (border control practices, population
policies) forms through which it exercises the power over life and death in the sphere of
everyday life in particular borderland areas. I argue that a study of exceptional locales
like India’s eastern borderlands elaborates the paradox of state sovereignty in two ways:
first, it illustrates that so-called “margins,” like colonies and borderlands, are necessary
for the institution of modern state sovereignty, and second, it enables a critical scrutiny of
the function of forms of violence as essential tools of modern governmentality. India’s
eastern borderlands are a crucial locale for such an inquiry because they lie at the
crossroads of the three area-studies formations of South, Southeast and East Asia. The
institutionalization of the official borders of the nation-states that rim this region—India,
China, Myanmar, Bangladesh and Bhutan—are comparatively recent historical
developments. Specters of pre-nation-statist spatial connections still survive in the region,
and often come into conflict with modern state technologies such as citizenship laws and
statutes regulating cross-border socioeconomic contacts among people. The central focus
of my project is on post-1980 Anglophone and local language literary fictions by Amitav
Ghosh, Siddhartha Deb, Parag Das and Raktim Xarma. These fictions demonstrate how
the eastern borderlands are figured in popular Indian discourse as a “state of nature” that
occupy a position of being both inside the rationalized territorial body of the nation-state
and outside the regime of normalized law and order. Focusing on figures as diverse as
v
bureaucrats, army officials, journalists, guerrillas and refugees (among others), they show
how socio-historical changes over a longue durée, and the practices and policies
employed by the state apparatus, coalesce to produce new modalities of subjectivity and
politics in these zones of exception in the Indian nation-state.

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