Retro-Modern India

Abstract

Firmly situated within the analytics of the political economy of a north Indian province, the book explores the politics of self-making in pursuit of the modern among low-caste/Dalit Chamars. This book argues that subaltern configurations of modernity need to be traced in the history of the traffic of ideas, practices and politics between differently-positioned subjects and communities within India. The book shows that analysing modernity from the standpoint of a subaltern low-caste community leads to the `West' being displaced as the immanent comparative focus, and to the simultaneous repositioning of the study of such community into a much broader framework than the caste system alone.$\$nManuela Ciotti is Assistant Professor in Global Studies at Aarhus University and `Framing the Global' Fellow (2011-2014) at Indiana University Bloomington. She has written extensively on subaltern communities in north India, modernity, gender, and politics.$\$nManuela can be contacted via email: manuela.ciotti@gmail.com