20th century indian culture
A01=Sumathi Ramaswamy
Author_Sumathi Ramaswamy
Category=CF
Category=CFB
Category=CFF
Category=CFG
Category=JBSL
Category=NHF
Category=NHTB
colonialism
discourse of labor
discourse of life
discourse of love
eq_bestseller
eq_dictionaries-language-reference
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
feminization of language
india
language
language and devotion
language and gender
language and the nation
language devotion
linguistic nationalism
linguistic revival
linguistic separatism
linguistics
modernity
motherhood
passionate attachment
political empowerment
postcolonialism
representations of language
social empowerment
southern india
tamil
tamil devotion
tamil india
Product details
- ISBN 9780520208056
- Weight: 499g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 20 Nov 1997
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Why would love for their language lead several men in southern India to burn themselves alive in its name? "Passions of the Tongue" analyzes the discourses of love, labor, and life that transformed Tamil into an object of such passionate attachment, producing in the process one of modern India's most intense movements for linguistic revival and separatism. Sumathi Ramaswamy suggests that these discourses cannot be contained within a singular metanarrative of linguistic nationalism and instead proposes a new analytic, "language devotion." She uses this concept to track the many ways in which Tamil was imagined by its speakers and connects these multiple imaginings to their experience of colonial and post-colonial modernity. Focusing in particular on the transformation of the language into a goddess, mother, and maiden, Ramaswamy explores the pious, filial, and erotic aspects of Tamil devotion. She considers why, as its speakers sought political and social empowerment, metaphors of motherhood eventually came to dominate representations of the language.
Sumathi Ramaswamy is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania.
