Freedom Inc.: Gendered Capitalism in New Indian Literature and Culture

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While globalization is often credited with the eradication of traditional' constraints tied to gender and caste, in reality the opening up of the Indian economy in the 1990s has led to a decline in freedom for many female, Dalit, and lower class Indians. This book explores the contraction of what it means to be free in post-liberalization India, examining how global capitalism has exacerbated existing inequalities based on traditional femininities and masculinities, while also creating new hierarchies. Freedom Inc. argues that post-1990s literature and culture frequently represents and reinforces the equation of free-market capitalism with individual freedom within the new idea of India. However, many texts often also challenge this logic by pointing to more expansive horizons of autonomy for the gendered self. Through readings of texts as diverse as Dalit womens life-writing, pop fiction, realist novels, self-help, regional film, and Netflix TV shows, Mangharam investigates how notions like 'free trade,' 'entrepreneurship, and self-help are experienced, embodied, and challenged by disadvantaged peoples, and by women differently than men. In the process, Freedom Inc. explores how different literary forms illuminate alternative and buried pathways to fuller freedoms.

Reviews

Freedom Inc. urgently maps discourses of freedom that shore up the acquisitive values of Millennial India. It provokes us to think of freedom as a hegemonic practice of liberalization and global capitalism. Yet Freedom Inc. also illuminates how the yearning to be free remains essential for an emancipatory politics of subalternity (Dalits and gendered minorities). Mangharam carefully joins intellectual and economic history with luminous readings of the literary and cultural terrains of contemporary India. This book makes an important case for considering how storytelling emerges in the vortex of contradictions between affluence and dearth that constitute postcolonial Indias ongoing struggles with freedom. * Mrinalini Chakravorty, Associate Professor of English, University of Virginia, USA *

Author Bio

Mukti Lakhi Mangharam is Associate Professor of English at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, USA.