Periodicals and Nation-Building: The Public Sphere, Modernity, and Modernism in Modern Review and Visva Bharati Quarterly

Akansha Singh

doi:10.18778/2083-2931.13.25

Authors

Akansha Singh NALSAR University of Law, India https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6833-1119

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-2931.13.25

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Keywords:

Modern Review, Visva Bharati Quarterly, colonialism, public sphere, modernity, modernism

Abstract

The paper analyzes selections from Modern Review and Visva Bharati Quarterly, to study the complex act of nation-building taking place in India during the first half of the twentieth century. Through these periodicals, it discusses three interconnected occurrences that contributed to the envisioning of new India: firstly, the construction of a politically aware public sphere through nationalistic sentiments and anti-imperial internationalism; secondly, India’s localization of modernity as oscillating between the colonial subjects’ reactionary modernity and the colonially administered modernity of domination; and thirdly, the emergence of a modernism that was more immersed in restructuring social and political systems of power than being restricted to formal and aesthetic novelty. Thus, drawing on writings published in Modern Review and Visva Bharati Quarterly, the paper assesses the degree to which the two periodicals realized the identity of new India.

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Author Biography

Akansha Singh, NALSAR University of Law, India

Akansha Singh is Assistant Professor of Literature at NALSAR University of Law. She is also the faculty coordinator for the Writing Lab at NALSAR. Her areas of research interest include nationalism and (post)colonial print cultures. She has previously published her works with Rupkatha, The Wire, and The Citizen.

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