“The Ruse of Freedom: A Comparative Essay on Ahimsa and Freedom of Expression”
With the rise of authoritarianism across the globe, debates about freedom of expression have become increasingly urgent in countries like India and the United States. However, these debates do not manifest uniformly. In India the freedom of expression rights of a novelist like Perumal Murugan are denied, while in the U.S. freedom of expression rights are used by conservatives like Charles Murray in public campaigns to promote deliberately provocative speech. This essay compares the Murugan and Murray cases in the interests of advancing our thinking about freedom of expression. Opening new lines of inquiry into freedom of expression via a decolonization of theory, it underscores the limits of liberal Millian ideas and proposes the value of alternative neo-Buddhist notions of ahimsa.
Out in Cultural Critique
(Spring 2022)!
Go here to read
CRITICAL ESSAY
“The Modern Adventures of Kanian Poongundranar, Classical Tamil Poet: Reflections on Literatures of the World, Vernacularly Speaking.”
In Vernaculars in an Age of World Literatures, ed. Christina Kulberg and David Watson (New York, Bloomsbury)
The “vernacular” is increasingly part of our contemporary critical vocabulary in seeking to understand the diverse literatures of the world. This essay explores the uses of this supple term–what it makes possible and where it meets its limits. Via repeated readings of Kanian Poongundranar’s magnificent classical Tamil poem/song “Yaadhum Oorey, Yaavarum Kelir” [Everywhere is my home, everyone my kin]. You will find the words quoted above in the banner of my website. That is how important I think the sentiment expressed by them is. The essay helps explain why.
OTHER ESSAYS & WORK
Guest edited Provocations forum on “The Vernacular” for South Asian Review is now out! Includes brief but terrific pieces by Bishnupriya Ghosh, Charu Gupta, Francesca Orsini and Nirmal Selvamony, with an introduction by me.
The Languages of Love: An Essay on Translation and Affect” in Comparative Literature 69.1, 2017.
“Literatures of the World: An Inquiry” in PMLA 131.5, 2016. Critique of World Literature idea.
“Spitting at Power: The Boom in Dalit Literature and Questions of Agency” in Journal of Contemporary Thought (2014)
Download Shankar, Dalit Literature
“Thugs and Bandits: Life and Law in Colonial and Epicolonial India” in Biography (2013)
Download Thugs and Bandits
Ch. 1, “Midnight’s Orphans, or a Postcolonialism Worth Its Name,” Flesh and Fish Blood: Postcolonialism, Translation and the Vernacular (2013; Berkeley: U of California Press; Hyderabad: OrientBlackswan India)
Download Shankar, Ch 1, Flesh and Fish Blood
“Necessity and Desire: Water and Coca Cola in India,” from Cultural Critique and the Global Corporation, ed. Purnima Bose and Laura Lyons, Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2010
Downlaod Shankar, Necessity and Desire
“Richard Wright’s Black Power,” from Richard Wright’s Travel Writings: New Reflections, ed. Virginia Whatley Smith, University Press of Mississippi, 2001
Download Shankar, Richard Wright’s Black Power
“The African Novel in a Course on the Twentieth Century Novel in English,” in Teaching the African Novel, ed. Gaurav Desai, New York: MLA, 2009
Download Shankar, The African Novel
“Tranlsation and the Vernacular,” in Other Tongues: Rethinking the Language Debates in India, ed. Nalini Iyer and Bonnie Zare, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2009
S. Shankar 