Nostalgic longings and imaginary Indias: Postcolonial analysis, collective memories, and the...

Given recent events in Afghanistan, Kashmir, and Israel, it is becoming increasingly evident that critics who deal with "practical political discourse"1 need to constantly keep track of the colonial, imperial, and neo-colonial texts that have marked our discursive landscapes. Raka Shome, for example, has defended the importance of postcolonial work that "examines, problematizes, and thinks through the complex power relations of colonialism," especially in situations where citizens think that the "thematics" of "territorial occupation and conquest" ended with the conclusion of the Second World War.2 "Although the postcolonial era marks a radical break with the colonial," notes Bradford Vivian, "echoes of imperial life continue to resonate powerfully within postcolonial phenomena."3 Jeff Bass, in his analysis of British "imperial responsibility," admonished communication scholars to remember that some notions of moral courses of action were based on some "delusions of a providentially ordained destiny" as well as profound feelings of duty, trusteeship, and humanitarianism.4 While these critics are coming from very different paradigmatic views of rhetoric and symbolic influence, they share an appreciation of the substantive role that discursive fragments continue to play in scholarly analysis of imperial and post-colonial contexts.