Kashmiri Life Narratives: Human Rights, Pleasure and the Local Cosmopolitan (Routledge Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Literature)

__Kashmiri Life Narratives__ takes as its central focus writings -- memoirs, non-fictional and fictional __Bildungsromane__ -- published circa 2008 by Kashmiris/Indians living in the Valley of Kashmir, India or in the diaspora. It offers a new perspective on these works by analyzing them within the framework of human rights discourse and advocacy. Literature has been an important medium for promoting the rights of marginalized Kashmiri subjects within Indian-occupied Kashmir, successfully putting Kashmir back on the global map and shifting discussion about Kashmir from the political board rooms to the international English-language book market. In discussing human rights advocacy through literature, this book also effects a radical change of perspective by highlighting positive rights (to enjoy certain things) rather than negative ones (to be spared certain things). Kashmiri life narratives deploy a language of pleasure rather than of physical pain to represent the state of having and losing rights. Kashmiri Life Narratives takes as its central focus writings – memoirs, non-fictional and fictional Bildungsromane – published circa 2008 by Kashmiris/Indians living in the Valley of Kashmir, India or in the diaspora. It offers a new perspective on these works by analyzing them within the framework of human rights discourse and advocacy. Literature has been an important medium for promoting the rights of marginalized Kashmiri subjects within Indian-occupied Kashmir and it has been successful in putting Kashmir back on the global map and in shifting discussions about Kashmir from the political board rooms to the international English-language book market. In discussing human rights advocacy through literature, this book also effects a radical change of perspective by highlighting positive rights (to enjoy certain things) rather than negative ones (to be spared certain things). Kashmiri life narratives deploy a language of pleasure rather than of physical pain to represent the state of having and losing rights. Cover 1 Half Title 2 Series 3 Title 4 Copyright 5 Dedication 6 Contents 8 Introduction: The Poet and the Cassette Player 10 1 Mobilizing Pleasure Through Genre: Curfewed Night and Our Moon Has Bloodclots as Kashmiri Bildungsromane 60 2 Literary Fiction as an Alternative to a Human Rights Report: The Case of Mirza Waheed’s The Collaborator 95 3 Imagining Local Cosmopolitanism and Cultural Human Rights in Sudha Koul’s The Tiger Ladies 132 4 Palatable Fictions: Negotiating Narratives of Consumption and Subalternity in Jaspreet Singh’s Chef 167 5 Portable Pleasures and Papier-Mâché: Strategic Exoticism in Mirza Waheed’s The Book of Gold Leaves 203 Conclusion/Postscript 239 Index 243 Kashmiri Life Narratives takes as its central focus writings ... memoirs, non-fictional and fictional Bildungsromane ... published circa 2008 by Kashmiris/Indians living in the Valley of Kashmir, India or in the diaspora. It offers a new perspective on these works by analyzing them within the framework of human rights discourse and advocacy. Literature has been an important medium for promoting the rights of marginalized Kashmiri subjects within Indian-occupied Kashmir and that it has been successful in putting Kashmir back on the global map and in shifting discussion about Kashmir from the political board rooms to the international English-language book market. In discussing human rights advocacy through literature, this book also effects a radical change of perspective by highlighting positive rights (to enjoy certain things) rather than negative ones (to be spared certain things). Kashmiri life narratives deploy a language of pleasure rather than of physical pain to represent the state of having and losing rights Scholarly theorizations of storytelling forms within human rights texts such as novels, human rights reports, testimonies or life narratives, typically focus on representations of physical pain. In contrast, this book shows how Kashmiri life narratives perform human rights advocacy through representations of pleasure and happiness.