Graphic Migrations
Precarity and Gender in India and the Diaspora

PB: $34.95
EAN: 978-1-4399-2025-1
Publication: Oct 20
HC: $110.50
EAN: 978-1-4399-2024-4
Publication: Oct 20
Ebook: $34.95
EAN: 978-1-4399-2026-8
Publication: Oct 20
246 pages
6 x 9
20 halftones
Examines “what remains” in migration stories surrounding the 1947 Partition of India
Read an excerpt from the Introduction (pdf)Description
In Graphic Migrations, Kavita Daiya provides a literary and cultural archive of refugee stories and experiences to respond to the question “What is created?” after decolonization and the 1947 Partition of India. She explores how stories of Partition migrations shape the political and cultural imagination of secularism and gendered citizenship for South Asians in India and the United States.
Daiya analyzes literature, Bollywood films, Margaret Bourke-White’s photography, digital media, and print culture to show how they memorialize or erase refugee experiences. She also engages oral testimonies of Partition refugees from Hong Kong, South Asia, and North America that address the nation-state, ethnic discrimination, and religious difference. Employing both Critical Refugee Studies and Feminist Postcolonial Studies frameworks, Daiya traces the cultural, affective, and political legacies of the Partition migrations for South Asia and South Asian America.
The precarity generated by modern migration and illuminated in public culture prompts a rethinking of how dominant media represents gendered migrants and refugees. Graphic Migrations demands that we redraw the boundaries of how we tell the story of modern world history, and of how we confront the intricately interwoven, intimate production of statelessness and citizenship across the world’s communities.
Reviews
“Kavita Daiya has written a panoramic study of post-Partition studies. The remnants of the mid-twentieth-century Partition may be the debris of long colonial histories, but these very remnants return to haunt the suffering memories of migrants and minorities who are frequently disfigured as enemies ‘within’ or displaced as enemies ‘without.’ Daiya argues that post-Partition remnants are dangerously weaponized by ethno-nationalists, who weaponize traditions of the sacred in order to demean the democratic ambitions of secular pluralism. Daiya’s wide scholarly purview ranges across literature, cinema, graphic novels, and the creative arts, as she assembles a rich archive of contemporary reflection and critical relevance.” — Homi K. Bhabha, Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of the Humanities, Harvard University
“Kavita Daiya’s reading of decolonization is centered on the vast and heterogeneous cultural production generated by Partition’s aftermath in South Asia and its diaspora. Graphic Migrations opens up new and exciting vistas for Partition studies. It also enhances our contemporary understanding of statelessness, ‘sub-altern’ secularism, gender, and precarity by viewing this historical catastrophe within a brilliantly conceptualized global framework of connections and resonances.”—Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, Global Distinguished Professor of English, New York University
“Graphic Migrations represents an important and unique contribution to the field of Partition studies specifically, and to the fields of postcolonial studies, memory studies, and diaspora studies more generally. Daiya advances impor- tant debates concerning religion, secularity, and subalternity, with insights into the crisis of secularism and how the Partition prompts a rethinking of the refu- gee. The book’s archive is at once expansive and eclectic, encompassing visual culture, film, novels, media, and digital memory projects. This is a beautifully written, finely argued, and original study.”—Asha Nadkarni, Associate Professor of English, University of Massachusetts Amherst
“This is a sophisticated and provocative set of reflections on migration stories as sites for alternative understandings of the secular at a time when the term itself is under scrutiny. Bringing together a fascinating variety of texts with connections to South Asia and its Partition histories, Daiya offers deft and sophisticated readings which speak to the emergence of what she calls ‘the subaltern secular,’ a resource for hope in our difficult century. Graphic Migrations is an important contribution to both South Asian literature and migration studies.” —Priyamvada Gopal, Professor in Postcolonial Studies, University of Cambridge
“Daiya constructs a dazzling mosaic of Partition images—drawn from the intimate literary, graphic, and visual representations of gendered statelessness, precarity, and survival—to produce a new motto for the decade: the subaltern secular. Weaving critical theory, oral history, digital humanities, and more traditional literary and filmic texts, along with graphic novels and emerging digital forms, Graphic Migrations is a journey into a new historiography of an old, previously underexplored trauma.”—Henry Schwarz, Professor Emeritus, Georgetown University
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Theorizing Subaltern Secularism in the Crisis of Modern Migration 1. “Partition Is Still Happening”: Transmedia and Graphic Secularism 2. The Ethics and Aesthetics of Witnessing: Refugees, Literary Modernism, and the American Diaspora 3. Melodrama, Community, and Diasporas in Popular Hindi and Accented Cinema 4. Transnational Asia, Testimony, and New Media Conclusion: Rethinking Mid-Twentieth-Century Asia and the Present
• Secularism in Crisis
• Restorying Migration: The Popular Representation of Refugees’ Stories
• Ecologies of Displacement: Migrants, Refugees, Citizens
• #rememberingpartition: Unpacking the Archive
• Gender, Displacement, and Ecologies of Loss in Vishwajyoti Ghosh’s Graphic Anthology This Side, That Side: Restorying Partition
• Photojournalism and Bearing Witness in Margaret Bourke-White’s Photography
• Migration, Reproductive Femininity, and Citizenship in Shauna Singh Baldwin’s What the Body Remembers
• Citizenship and Expulsions in Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry
of Utmost Happiness
• Media, Violence, and Reparations in the Conflict Zone
• Surviving Gendered Citizenship and Death in Shyam Benegal’s Mammo
• Indo-Pak Intimacy and Border Crossings in Meghna Gulzar’s Raazi and Kabir Khan’s Bajrangi Bhaijaan
• Pakistan, Political Violence, and Failed Intimacies in Sabiha Sumar’s Khamosh Pani
• Conclusion: Performing the Secular, Inventing Peace
• Intergenerational Memories: Rebuilding Life and Reckoning with Loss in Mumbai, Pune, Hong Kong, and Washington, D.C.
• New Art and Digital Archive Memory Projects: Testimony and Peace
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the Author(s)
Subjects
In the Series
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Asian American History and Culture edited by Cathy Schlund-Vials, Rick Bonus, and Shelley Sang-Hee Lee
Founded by Sucheng Chan in 1991, the Asian American History and Culture series has sponsored innovative scholarship that has redefined, expanded, and advanced the field of Asian American studies while strengthening its links to related areas of scholarly inquiry and engaged critique. Like the field from which it emerged, the series remains rooted in the social sciences and humanities, encompassing multiple regions, formations, communities, and identities. Extending the vision of founding editor Sucheng Chan and emeriti editor Michael Omi, David Palumbo-Liu, K. Scott Wong and Linda Trinh Võ, series editors Cathy Schlund-Vials, Rick Bonus, and Shelley Sang-Hee Lee continue to develop a foundational collection that embodies a range of theoretical and methodological approaches to Asian American studies.