TY - BOOK AU - Singh,Julietta ED - Project Muse. TI - Unthinking Mastery : : Dehumanism and Decolonial Entanglements / SN - 9780822372363 PY - 2018/// CY - Durham PB - Duke University Press KW - Sinha, Indra. KW - Mahāśvetā Debī, KW - Kincaid, Jamaica. KW - Coetzee, J. M., KW - Kincaid, Jamaica KW - Sinha, Indra KW - Postkoloniale Literatur KW - gnd KW - Literaturtheorie KW - Herrschaft KW - Motiv KW - Power (Social sciences) in literature KW - fast KW - Postcolonialism in literature KW - BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY KW - Literary KW - bisacsh KW - Pouvoir (Sciences sociales) dans la litterature KW - Postcolonialisme dans la litterature KW - Criticism, interpretation, etc KW - Electronic books. KW - local N1 - Introduction: reading against mastery -- Decolonizing mastery -- The language of mastery -- Posthumanitarian fictions -- Humanimal dispossessions -- Cultivating discomfort -- Coda: surviving mastery; Open Access N2 - Challenges a core, fraught dimension of geopolitical, cultural, and scholarly endeavor: the drive toward mastery over the self and others. Drawing on postcolonial theory, queer theory, new materialism, and animal studies, the author traces how pervasive the concept of mastery has been to modern politics and anticolonial movements. The author juxtaposes destructive uses of mastery, such as the colonial domination of bodies, against more laudable forms, such as intellectual and linguistic mastery, to underscore how the concept -- regardless of its use -- is rooted in histories of violence and the wielding of power. For anticolonial thinkers like Fanon and Gandhi, forms of bodily mastery were considered to be the key to a decolonial future. Yet as the author demonstrates, their advocacy for mastery unintentionally reinforced colonial logics. In readings of postcolonial literature by J.M. Coetzee, Mahasweta Devi, Indra Sinha, and Jamaica Kincaid, the author suggests that only by moving beyond the compulsive desire to become masterful human subjects can we disentangle ourselves from the legacies of violence and fantasies of invulnerability that lead us to hurt other humans, animals, and the environment UR - https://muse.jhu.edu/book/64085/ ER -