States of Disconnect: The China-India Literary Relation in the Twentieth Century

The Anna Balakian Prize for International Comparative Literature has been awarded to Adhira Mangalagiri for her book States of Disconnect, which examines the breakdown of transnationalism through readings of literary texts that express aversion to pairing ideas of China and India. Mangalagiri proposes the concept of "disconnect" as a crisis of transnationalism perceptible in moments when a connection is severed, interrupted, or disavowed, and develops three new strategies for comparison—friction, ellipses, and contingency—that offer a different path by which literary texts can cultivate a critical sensibility for making sense of a world rife with division.

Format: Hardback
Length: 296 pages
Publication date: 24 January 2023
Publisher: Columbia University Press

Winner,2025 Anna Balakian Prize,International Comparative Literature Association In an interconnected world, literature plays a vital role in connecting people across borders and cultures. However, in today's globalized world, where hopes for globalization are waning and exclusionary nationalism is on the rise, can literature still offer new ways of relating with others? Comparative literature has long been fascinated by the concepts of circulation, contact, connectivity, and mobility, but what if it instead sought out their antitheses? "States of Disconnect" by Adhira Mangalagiri explores the breakdown of transnationalism through readings of literary texts that express aversion to pairing ideas of China and India. Mangalagiri argues that these texts articulate the undesirability or impossibility of relating with national others, tracing portrayals of violence, silence, and distance. She proposes the concept of "disconnect" as a crisis of transnationalism perceptible in moments when a connection is severed, interrupted, or disavowed. Despite their apparent insularity, texts of disconnect offer possibilities for relating ethically across national borders while resisting both narrow nationalisms and globalized habits of thought. Mangalagiri develops three new strategies for comparison—friction, ellipses, and contingency—that together comprise a critical vocabulary of disconnect. By foregrounding transnationalism's discontents, "States of Disconnect" offers a different path by which literary texts can cultivate a critical sensibility for making sense of a world rife with division.

Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780231205689