Autobiography and Decolonization: Modernity, Masculinity, and the Nation-State
Philip Holden reveals deeply gendered connections between the writing of individual lives and of the narratives of nations emerging from colonialism. Autobiography and Decolonization is the first book to give serious academic attention to autobiographies of nationalist leaders in the process of decolonization, attending to them not simply as partial historical documents, but as texts involved in remaking the world views of their readers.
            Holden examines Mohandas K. Gandhi’s An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth, Marcus Garvey’s fragmentary Autobiography,Joseph Ephraim Casely Hayford’s Ethiopia Unbound, Lee Kuan Yew’s The Singapore Story, Nelson Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom, Jawaharlal Nehru’s An Autobiography, and Kwame Nkrumah’s Ghana:The Autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah.
            Holden argues that these examples of life writing have had significant influence on the formation of new, and often profoundly gendered, national identities. These narratives constitute the nation less as an imagined community than as an imagined individual. Moving from the past to the promise of the future, they mediate relationships between public and private, and between individual and collective stories. Ultimately, they show how the construction of modern selfhood is inextricably linked to the construction of a postcolonial polity.
1119608074
Autobiography and Decolonization: Modernity, Masculinity, and the Nation-State
Philip Holden reveals deeply gendered connections between the writing of individual lives and of the narratives of nations emerging from colonialism. Autobiography and Decolonization is the first book to give serious academic attention to autobiographies of nationalist leaders in the process of decolonization, attending to them not simply as partial historical documents, but as texts involved in remaking the world views of their readers.
            Holden examines Mohandas K. Gandhi’s An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth, Marcus Garvey’s fragmentary Autobiography,Joseph Ephraim Casely Hayford’s Ethiopia Unbound, Lee Kuan Yew’s The Singapore Story, Nelson Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom, Jawaharlal Nehru’s An Autobiography, and Kwame Nkrumah’s Ghana:The Autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah.
            Holden argues that these examples of life writing have had significant influence on the formation of new, and often profoundly gendered, national identities. These narratives constitute the nation less as an imagined community than as an imagined individual. Moving from the past to the promise of the future, they mediate relationships between public and private, and between individual and collective stories. Ultimately, they show how the construction of modern selfhood is inextricably linked to the construction of a postcolonial polity.
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Autobiography and Decolonization: Modernity, Masculinity, and the Nation-State

Autobiography and Decolonization: Modernity, Masculinity, and the Nation-State

by Philip Holden
Autobiography and Decolonization: Modernity, Masculinity, and the Nation-State

Autobiography and Decolonization: Modernity, Masculinity, and the Nation-State

by Philip Holden

Hardcover(1)

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Overview

Philip Holden reveals deeply gendered connections between the writing of individual lives and of the narratives of nations emerging from colonialism. Autobiography and Decolonization is the first book to give serious academic attention to autobiographies of nationalist leaders in the process of decolonization, attending to them not simply as partial historical documents, but as texts involved in remaking the world views of their readers.
            Holden examines Mohandas K. Gandhi’s An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth, Marcus Garvey’s fragmentary Autobiography,Joseph Ephraim Casely Hayford’s Ethiopia Unbound, Lee Kuan Yew’s The Singapore Story, Nelson Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom, Jawaharlal Nehru’s An Autobiography, and Kwame Nkrumah’s Ghana:The Autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah.
            Holden argues that these examples of life writing have had significant influence on the formation of new, and often profoundly gendered, national identities. These narratives constitute the nation less as an imagined community than as an imagined individual. Moving from the past to the promise of the future, they mediate relationships between public and private, and between individual and collective stories. Ultimately, they show how the construction of modern selfhood is inextricably linked to the construction of a postcolonial polity.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780299226107
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
Publication date: 05/19/2008
Series: Wisconsin Studies in Autobiography
Edition description: 1
Pages: 296
Product dimensions: 6.20(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Philip Holden is associate professor of English at the National University of Singapore.
His books include Modern Subjects/Colonial Texts; Orienting Masculinity, Orienting Nation; and (with Richard Ruppel) Imperial Desire: Dissident Sexualities and Colonial Literature.

Table of Contents


Preface and Acknowledgments     ix
Introduction     3
Starting Points: Life Writing, Modernity, and Masculinity in the Postcolony     15
Missing in Action: The Strange Case of Imperial Autobiography     39
Absent States: Casely Hayford, Gandhi, Garvey     60
Nehru and the National Sublime     88
Modernity's Body: Kwame Nkrumah's Ghana     117
Nelson Mandela's Long Walk     142
A Man and an Island: Lee Kuan Yew's The Singapore Story     168
Conclusion     189
Notes     211
Bibliography     247
Index     269
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