The Antekaal Awakens: Rendezvous with Rama (Rajya) and the Golden Past in India’s Anglophone Science Fiction

A specter of an indigenous pastism is haunting India—and India’s anglophone science fiction (ISFE) not only extrapolates but also harks back to a golden past, fusing “science” and “fiction”, “history” and “myth”, and “gods” and “aliens”. As a hybrid, eclectic mode, ISFE evolves unique strategies of...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Khan, Sami Ahmad
Format: Book
Language:Norwegian
Online Access:Request full text
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Summary:A specter of an indigenous pastism is haunting India—and India’s anglophone science fiction (ISFE) not only extrapolates but also harks back to a golden past, fusing “science” and “fiction”, “history” and “myth”, and “gods” and “aliens”. As a hybrid, eclectic mode, ISFE evolves unique strategies of engagement with time, history, mythology, nationalism, and folklore, which necessitates a newer framework to approach temporalities deployed by genre SF. This chapter, thus, proposes an “antekaal” thesis to theorize and explore the temporalities of ISFE. The four nodes of the antekaal—“before” and “against” time, “end of time”, and “eternal time”—underscore how myths, markets, and cultural production negotiate Hindu Nationalism, colonialism, and a mythic golden past.