S. Shankar is Assistant Professor of English at Rutgers University. He is the author of the acclaimed novel, A Map of Where I Live.

• Acknowledgments Preface: Colonial Modernity, Textual Economics, and Travel Narratives PART I: PROLOGUE TO AN ARGUMENT 1. Introduction: Textual Economics, the Modern, and the Postmodern 2. Travel Narratives and Gulliver's Travels PART II: COLONIALISM AND MODERNITY 3. Into Darkness and Out of It 4. Wright and Wrong in a Land of Pathos 5. V.S. Naipaul, Modernity, and Postcolonial Excrement Notes Bibliography Index SUNY Series, Explorations in Postcolonial Studies

"Fresh and provocative. With fluent writing, this book is wide-ranging and up to date in its references and allusions to current controversies. It touches on some of the most controversial topics in contemporary critical theory and cultural studies." — E. San Juan Jr., author of Beyond Postcolonial Theory"Textual Traffic offers important insights into the term 'colonial modernity,' seeing it not merely as a particular modernity produced under colonial regimes but arguing that all modernity is made possible by colonialism. The readings of Hurston and Wright are valuable and original. This book brings together the fields of postcolonial and African-American literary studies." —Inderpal Grewal, author of Home and Harem: Nation, Gender, Empire, and the Cultures of Travel