Anticolonial Sociology: 'Afro-Asia' from Vitalism to Bandung

Professor Elam, James Daniel   (Principal Investigator (PI))

35

2021-08-01

545000

Anticolonial Sociology: 'Afro-Asia' from Vitalism to Bandung

anticolonialism, history of sociology, literary analysis, postcolonialism, Third World solidarity

LiteratureHistory

Humanities & Social Sciences (H)

27614321

Early Career Scheme (ECS)

2021

On-going

1 The primary goal of this research project is to expand our understanding, both aesthetically and historically, of anticolonial writing across the Global South in the twentieth century. This project re-situates anticolonial writing in its historical context, and with its original interlocutors: social scientific theory, political theory, and literary modernism. It thus connects the US with the Third World activism. The project thus challenges the common notion that certain types of writing possess no aesthetic merit; in this case, anticolonial writing from the Global South, and sociological writing from the early twentieth century. Anticolonial thought has been seen as dully pragmatic or flatly political. Sociological thought has been treated as academic or as potentially theoretical. In both cases, scholars have heretofore missed the aesthetic and political commitments that are implicit in the text. This project corrects this scholarly omission. 2 The project will intervene in multiple disciplinary debates, and will be valuable to scholars working across multiple fields. This includes, in the first instance, debates about postcolonial literature; debates about ‘world literature’; and the circulation of texts between the Global North and the Global South. This includes the history of sociology; the history of anticolonial, decolonial, and postcolonial activism; and the history of Third World solidarity movements during the Cold War. 3 The project’s most significant long-term outcome will be a book-length monograph that offers the first sustained analysis of political thought in the Global South, across the twentieth century. The monograph, tentatively titled Anticolonial Sociology: ‘Afro-Asia’ from Vitalism to Solidarity, has been already been solicited by Fordham University Press and Cambridge University Press. 4 I will write and submit one academic essay, taken from my research on sociological critique, to PMLA, one of the leading journals in my field. I expect to submit this essay in March 2022. 5 In addition to these two primary research outputs, this project will also result in the production of an anthology, Theory and Criticism from the Global South, already under contract with Bloomsbury Press. The research I will conduct for this project will make available, in many cases for the first time, political and aesthetic writing from South Asia, Africa, and East Asia.