New Books Network Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan, "Overdetermined: How Indian English Literature Becomes Ethnic, Postcolonial, and Anglophone" (Columbia UP, 2025)
Oct 8, 2025
Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan, an Assistant Professor at Rice University and author of "Overdetermined", dives deep into the complexities of Indian English literature. She explores why identity is hard to define in literary studies and how writers like Bharati Mukherjee and Jhumpa Lahiri navigate these intersections. Srinivasan introduces 'accented reading', showcasing how accents reveal narratives of migration. The conversation also critiques neoliberal academia and highlights the importance of critical engagement with literature and theory in resisting anti-humanities sentiments.
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Accented Reading Reframes Identity
- Accented reading reframes identity as a co-created relation between reader and text rather than a fixed property of the text.
- Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan urges attention to how readers' expectations produce labels like "Indian English literature."
Scholars Can Be Overdetermined Too
- "Overdetermined" names how scholars are hailed into identitarian relations that shape their work as much as writers' burdens do.
- Srinivasan argues scholars must account for this forced relation instead of simply rejecting identity politics.
Mukherjee's Rejection Of Ethnic Labeling
- Bharati Mukherjee refused ethnic labels and publicly insisted she was an American, complicating readings of her immigrant fiction.
- Srinivasan uses Mukherjee to show how rejecting an ethnic identity can itself be a strategy to enter the American canon.
