Agent in the Margin

Clara A.B. Joseph is an associate professor of English at the University of Calgary with a research specialization in postcolonial studies. She is a co-editor of Global Fissures: Postcolonial Fusions (2006) and Theology and Literature: Rethinking Reader Responsibility (2006) and is on the editorial boards of ARIEL and the Journal of Postcolonial Writing.

• The Agent in the Margin: Nayantara Sahgal's Gandhian Fiction by Clara A.B. JosephPrefaceIntroduction: Agency in the Margins: Althusser, Gandhi, SahgalChapter One: The Interpellated ""I"": Gandhian Ideology and the Autobiographical GenreChapter Two: The Thinking Subject: Virginity and SwarajChapter Three: The Special Place of Literature: Mahasati, SatyagrahiChapter Four: Overdetermination and TruthChapter Five: The Resisting Subject: Dignity of Lesser BreedsConclusion: Representing the Human Person Works CitedIndex

"How lucky we are to have this book, which captures the unusual place of Nayantara Sahgal's committed writing in contemporary Indian literature. Best known as Jawaharlal Nehru's niece and a severe critic of her cousin Indira Gandhi, Sahgal appears in Joseph's vividly concise analysis as a strong writer mapping agency for Indian collective identity. Grounding her approach in an acute summation of the entire arc of her subjects life-thought, Clara Joseph balances brilliantly her literary criticism of Sahgal's work with philosophical elements that make her book an interesting theoretical piece thoroughly woven with rigor and deep sensitivity. As such, postcolonial and Gandhian scholars are offered here the opportunity to consider the interaction between Gandhian ideology and Sahgal's fiction in the context of the making of post-independence India." -- Ramin Jahanbegloo, University of Toronto, author of India Revisited (2007)and The Spirit of India (2008) -- 200910