Part I : 1867-1945. 1. Oxford at the crossroads : England and the world beyond -- 2. T.S. Eliot vs the League and UNESCO -- 3. 'Independence, dependence, and interdependence day' : Finnegans Wake and the modern state -- Part II : 1946-2014. Prologue : The 'C' in UNESCO : a very short introduction -- 4. Notes towards a vagabond humanism : Mphahlele's Tagore / Rabindranath's Bāuls -- 5. Against state literacy : J.M. Coetzee vs the novel -- 6. Beyond translation : Antjie Krog vs the 'mother tongue' -- 7. Against naturalization : Arvind Krishna Mehrotra and the 'interplay of languages' -- 8. Beyond multiculturalism : Tagore.. Joyce ... Rushdie.. Chaudhuri -- Postscript : Between Sky and Ground -- the art of Xu Bing
Summary
Explores the relationship between literature and international relations and considers how writing resists norms and puts any fixed or final idea of community in question. Part I examines the European context (1860 to 1945) and Part II analyses the traditions of disruptive writing that emerged out of sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia after 1945
