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Jagannath's Saligram: On Bruno Latour and Literary Critique After Postcoloniality
- Postmodern Culture
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 18, Number 2, January 2008
- 10.1353/pmc.0.0012
- Article
- Additional Information
Bruno Latour has turned to Indian vernacular fiction to illustrate the limits of ideology critique. In examining the method of literary analysis that underlies his appropriation of postcolonial history and culture, we appeal to Edward Said's notion of "traveling theory" in order to discuss critically the aesthetic as well as political stakes of using the technology of the modern novel for the allegorical purposes that Latour has in mind. We argue that Latourian analysis fails to uphold its own rigorous aspirations when it reduces complex literary and cultural representation to universal allegory.