Flesh and Fish Blood: Postcolonialism, Translation, and the Vernacular

Acknowledgments

xi Acknowledgments Much of the material that makes up this book was presented at various forums over the course of a decade. I am grateful to audiences at the following institutions and meetings for questions and comments: American University, Cairo; Asian Studies Development Program of the East West Center (workshop held at Johnson Community College ); Center for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi; Central Institute for English and Foreign Languages (now UEFL), Hyderabad, India; Central University of Tamil Nadu (Tiruvarur); Columbia University ; Cornell University; Forum on Contemporary Theory (both at the offices of the Forum in Baroda and at annual conventions); International Auto/Biography Association Biennial Conference (2008); International Cultural Studies Program Lecture Series, East-West Center, Honolulu; Madras University; Middlebury College; National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore; Modern Language Association (several annual conventions); University of California, Davis; University of California, Irvine; University of Hawai’i at Manoa; University of Houston; University of Texas, Austin; University of Texas, San Antonio ; University of Washington, Seattle; University of Western Ontario; University of Wisconsin, Madison; Annual South Asian Literature Association Conference (2001); Roehampton University, London; Rutgers University; School of Oriental and African Studies, London. Chapter 1 is a revised version of “Midnight’s Orphans, or a Postcolonialism Worth Its Name,” first appearing in the journal Cultural xii | Acknowledgments Critique (vol. 56, no. 1), published by the University of Minnesota Press (copyright 2004 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota). Sections of chapter 4 were originally published in an earlier version under the title “Postcolonialism and the Problem of Translation” in New Bearings in English Studies, edited by R. Azhagarasan, Bruce Bennett, Mohan Ramanan, R. Palanivel, T. Sriraman, and C. Vijayasree. These sections are published here by permission of Orient Blackswan Private Limited, Hyderabad, India. I thank the editors of Cultural Critique as well as the anthology for the opportunity to present my preliminary thoughts on vernacular postcolonialism and translation, and the respective presses for permission to reproduce them here in revised form. Various individuals contributed to my developing arguments by generously reading and responding to them in draft. I especially acknowledge Cynthia Franklin for reading the entire manuscript at a crucial stage and making suggestions with her customary keen insight. The anonymous readings of the manuscript commissioned by Richard Terdiman and Ed Dimendberg, former and present coordinating editors of the FlashPoints series of the University of California Press, were thoughtful, rigorous, and enormously helpful in sharpening the argument and bringing it to its proper potential. I am grateful for the pointed criticisms as well as the enthusiastic support expressed in them. The process of revision was aided in no small measure by the thorough care with which Dick and Ed managed the manuscript through the various stages of review. I am confident Flesh and Fish Blood is a better book because of their exacting but committed support. I am grateful too to Mary Francis, Kim Hogeland, Elisabeth Magnus, Caitlin O’Hara, Sandy Drooker, and Tim Roberts for their able assistance through the production process. More generally, an intellectual community spread out across several continents has played a significant role in helping me think through problems and answers in pursuing this project. In Hawai’i, Cristina Bacchilega, Arindam Chakraborty, Vrinda Dalmiya, Monisha Dasgupta , Keala Francis, Vili Hereniko, Laura Lyons, Paul Lyons, Cheryl Naruse, Jon Osorio, John Zuern, and, again, Cynthia Franklin have been valued readers/interlocutors of my work, or collaborators in the organization of two symposia on translation and humanism that related germanely to the subject of this book, or indeed both. Cynthia Franklin has been an especially important resource in multiple ways over the years and deserves special mention for her fabulous support Acknowledgments | xiii and generosity with her time. I also want to acknowledge the various participants of the Comparatism and Translation in Literary and Cultural Studies interest group, too many to list individually, and the students in my Translation and Comparatism graduate seminar. I am especially grateful to my students for their enthusiasm and for a stimulating semester of discussions. Elsewhere, I value the friendship and/or scholarly dialogue provided by Hosam Aboul-Ela, S. Anandhi, Fran Bartkowski, Purnima Bose, Tim Brennan, S. Charusheela, Kanishka Chowdhury, Sheila Contreras , Gaurav Desai, Ayman El-Dessouky, Dermot Dix, Barbara Foley, Keya Ganguly, V. Geetha, Ferial Ghazoul, Bishnupriya Ghosh, Barbara Harlow, Salah Hassan, Andy Hsiao, C. T. Indra, Nalini Iyer, Prafulla Kar, Grace Koh, Chandana Mathur, Louis Mendoza, Satya Mohanty...