The Performance of Nationalism
India, Pakistan, and the Memory of Partition

Jisha Menon's book explores the mimetic relationships between history and political performance and between India and Pakistan.

Jisha Menon (Author)

9781108468565, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 30 August 2018

272 pages, 13 b/w illus.
23 x 15 x 1.5 cm, 0.4 kg

'Jisha Menon's book is an incredible intervention in debates of nationalist identity constitution through an expansive understanding of the categories of performance … This is a powerful book that should be read by all those who are studying performance, representation and the constitution of national identity.' Neelam Mansingh, The Book Review

Imagine the patriotic camaraderie of national day parades. How crucial is performance for the sustenance of the nation? The Performance of Nationalism considers the formation of the Indian and Pakistani nation, in the wake of the most violent chapter of its history: the partition of the subcontinent. In the process, Jisha Menon offers a fresh analysis of nationalism from the perspective of performance. Menon recuperates the manifold valences of 'mimesis' as aesthetic representation, as the constitution of a community of witnesses, and as the mimetic relationality that underlies the encounter between India and Pakistan. The particular performances considered here range from Wagah border ceremonies to the partition theatre of Asghar Wajahat, Kirti Jain, M. K. Raina, and the cinema of Ritwik Ghatak and M. S. Sathyu. By pointing to the tropes of twins, doubles, and doppelgängers that suffuse these performances, this study troubles the idea of two insular, autonomous nation-states of India and Pakistan. In the process, Menon recovers mimetic modes of thinking that unsettle the reified categories of identity politics.

1. Introduction
2. Bordering on drama: the performance of politics and the politics of performance
3. Ghatak's cinema and the discoherence of the Bengal partition
4. The poetics and politics of accommodation
5. Somatic texts and the gender of partition
6. Kashmir: hospitality and the 'unfinished business' of partition.

Subject Areas: Black & Asian studies [JFSL3], Theatre studies [AN]