How can we theorise partitions differently? How are new identities, moralities, polities and life constructed post-partition? How are gender and sexuality recalibrated after partition? How can violence be theorised? What is the relationship between identity in the diaspora and identity after partition? What is the relationship between the movement of capital and national borders that is the mark of partition?

Partitions and their Afterlives engages with political partitions and how their aftermath affects the contemporary life of nations and their citizens. Using a comparative perspective, the essays seek to stretch our understanding of these conflicts and to show how elements of our day-to-day lives have been shaped by them. In juxtaposing the various partitions in a single volume the book contributes to debates on citizenship, collective memory, nation-building, and borders and boundaries. Such a focus also reveals how local communities as well as nations use their knowledge of the past and history. This ground-breaking multi-disciplinary and multi-region volume will analyse the various convergences and departures between the different partitions and draw out lessons for the present. In so doing, this work will also examine methodological challenges and the imperatives for scholars working on individual countries.

Radhika Mohanram is a Professor at the Centre for Critical and Cultural Theory, Cardiff University, UK.

Anindya Raychaudhuri is a Lecturer in English at the University of St Andrews.

Introduction

Radhika Mohanram and Anindya Raychaudhuri



1. The 1947 Partition Violence: Characteristics and Interpretations

Ian Talbot



2. The Socio-Historical Production of Partition in Palestine

Marcelo Svirsky and Ronnen Ben-Arie



3. Sexuality after Partition: The Great Indian Private Sphere

Radhika Mohanram



4. Lessons not Learned from the Yugoslav Dismemberment and their Implications for the European Union

Stefano Bianchini



5. Legacies of Partition: Remembering the German Democratic Republic

Chris Weedon



6. Legacy of Indian partition

Samuel Sequeira



7. Post-partition anxieties and the matter of authenticity in Ireland

Louise Harrington



8. Drawing Partition and Its Violence: Joe Saccos Palestine and Vishwajyoti Ghoshs This Side, That Side

Vedita Cowaloosur



9. Advertising (Across) Borders: Fetishizing Humanism and the Magic of Capitalism

Anindya Raychaudhuri



10. Following a Theory of Partition

Jennifer Yusin