sunderason

This book explores the aesthetic forms of the political left across the borders of post-colonial, post-partition South Asia. Spanning India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh, the contributors study art, film, literature, poetry and cultural discourse to illuminate the ways in which political commitment has been given aesthetic form and artistic value by artists and by cultural and political activists in postcolonial South Asia.

With a focused conceptualization this volume asks: Does the political left in South Asia have a recognizable aesthetic form? And if so, what political effects do left-wing artistic movements and aesthetic artefacts have in shaping movements against inequality and injustice? Reframing political aesthetics within a postcolonial and decolonised framework, the contributors detail the trajectories and transformations of left-wing cultural formations and affiliations and focus on connections and continuities across post-1947/8 India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

Sanjukta Sunderson is Assistant Professor of Modern South Asian Studies at Leiden University, Netherlands. A Historian of 20th-century left-wing aesthetics and intellectual histories of decolonisation, her research explores connected histories of post-partition visual art alongside transnational formations of Third World cultural solidarities.

Lotte Hoek is Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at University of Edinburgh, UK. Her research focuses on the moving image in South Asia.