This MULOSIGE syllabus has been compiled by Francesca Orsini (SOAS, MULOSIGE) and is entitled ‘Colonialism, a multilingual local and it’s significant geographies’. Follow the link below to download the course.

In historical accounts of colonialism and world literature, the literary “colonial encounter” is usually viewed in terms of diffusion, influence,  assimilation into world literature and global capitalism, epistemic violence, or mimicry. English is the ideological battleground and local languages and literature are reshaped in its image. But if we take the case of India, the persistent multilingualism, the polyphony of old and new forms of literary production, the varied and sometimes occluded avenues of circulation, and the strikingly different modes of translation suggest a conception closer to geographer Doreen Massey’s idea of space “as the sphere of the possibility of the existence of multiplicity in the sense of contemporaneous plurality; as the sphere in which distinct trajectories coexist.” By taking multilingualism seriously and considering a range of genres and tastes that moved or failed to move across languages and along different “significant geographies”, this course traces the distinct trajectories of literature under colonialism and challenges simple models of world literature.

Download the course here: Colonialism, a multilingual local and it’s significant geographies.