Autobiography and Decolonization: Modernity, Masculinity, and the Nation-statePhilip 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to autobiographies of nationalist leaders in the process of decolonization, attending to them not simply as partial historical documents, but as texts involved in remaking the world views of their readers.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. |
Contents
Introduction | 3 |
Life Writing Modernity | 15 |
The Strange Case | 39 |
Casely Hayford Gandhi Garvey | 60 |
Nehru and the National Sublime | 88 |
Kwame Nkrumahs Ghana | 117 |
Nelson Mandelas Long Walk | 142 |
Lee Kuan Yews | 168 |
Common terms and phrases
Achimota African Albertina Sisulu anticolonial auto autonomy become biography body British central century chapter Chatterjee Chin Peng Chinese Clifford colonial context critique cultural Curzon decolonization describes disciplinary discipline discourse discussion early edited elements Ethiopia Ethiopia Unbound ethnic Gandhi Garvey Garvey's gender genre Ghana global Gold Coast Hayford identity imperial independence India individual Jawaharlal Nehru Kwamankra Kwame Nkrumah later Lee Kuan Lee Kuan Yew Lee's London Long Walk Malay male Mandela manner masculinity memoirs ment modernity multiculturalism Nabha narrator nation-state National Archives national autobiographies national narrative nationalist Nelson Mandela Nkru notes Pahang parallel political postcolonial postmodern prime minister prison produced protagonist racial reader reading relationship representative retrospective Robben Island self-fashioning sexuality Singapore Story Singapore's Sisulu social imaginary society South Africa stress struggle technologies tion tional tradition transformation Walk to Freedom Watson Winnie Winnie Mandela women writing