Wild Races: Scripturalizing Empire in British India

This book explores the narrative networks that underlie the empirical dimensions of the worlds we imagine and inhabit. Scripturalizing the empire locates this exploration within an ascendant social formation in the nineteenth century—British India

Format: Hardback
Length: 220 pages
Publication date: 05 January 2024
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

This book delves into the narrative dynamics of social formations in British India, employing a multifaceted approach that includes statistical and ethnographic records, visual cultures, and linguistic exercises. It aims to shed light on the British Empire's production of knowledge about the so-called "strange new worlds" it encountered. The author, Lalruatkima, introduces the concept of "scripturalizing" to describe the creation of these worlds through writing. This focus highlights the empire as one of many such formations imagined against the backdrop of contested conversations about its nature and potential. When examined in reverse, empire reveals its constituent narrative placeholders and the sequences of meaning-making that connect them. The power differentials between the imperial center and the frontier determine the placeholders and their integration into the larger narrative. These discursive components, in turn, shape the politically charged attitudes and relations within the imperial domain. Lalruatkima conducts a thorough excavation of the imperial archive to uncover material that accounts for these narrative dynamics.

Weight: 476g
Dimension: 237 x 158 x 19 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781978716445