Partha Chatterjee (scholar)

Partha Chatterjee (born 1947) is a Subaltern Studies and Postcolonial scholar. He is a multi-disciplinary scholar, with special emphasis on political science, anthropology and history. Chatterjee received Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize in 2009 for his contributions in Academics.

Education

He completed a B.A. (Hons.) in Political Science at Presidency College of the University of Calcutta and a Ph.D. at the University of Rochester.

Career

He is honorary professor of Political Science and was the Director of the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta and is currently a Professor of Anthropology and South Asian Studies at Columbia University in New York. He was a Founder-Member of the Subaltern Studies Collective. He is a Joint-editor of Baromash, a biannual Bengali literary journal published from Calcutta.

He has published books of essays in Bengali and is a well-known playwright and actor on the Calcutta stage. He appeared in the 2007 Mira Nair film, The Namesake, based upon the novel The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri. He is credited as a 'Reformed Hindu' in the film.

Chatterjee has been criticized by several Dalit scholars in India and overseas for ignoring the caste question and eliding it under the subaltern category. It should also be pointed out the Chatterjee and most his colleagues in Subaltern Studies which include Gayatri Spivak are Brahmins, the most privileged caste category in India.

Publications

Books

• 1986. Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World. London: Zed Books.

• 1993. The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories". Princeton University Press.

• 1995. Texts of Power. Minneapolis University of Minnesota Press.

• 1997. A Possible India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

• 1997. The Present History of West Bengal. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

• 2003. A Princely Impostor? The Strange and Universal History of the Kumar of Bhawal. Princeton University Press.

• 2004. The Politics of the Governed: Popular Politics in Most of the World, Columbia University Press.

• 2010. Empire and Nation: Selected Essays 1985-2005, Columbia University Press.

• 2011. Lineages of Political Society: Studies in Postcolonial Democracy, Columbia University Press

• 2012. "The Black Hole of Empire: History of a Global Practice of Power", Princeton University Press.

External links

• Biography of Partha Chatterjee on Columbia University's faculty page
• Member Profile, Committee on Global Thought at Columbia University
• The Two Hats of Partha Chatterjee: An Interview
• Partha Chatterjee: Colonialism, History and Civil Society
• [1] Towards a Postcolonial Modernity - Asiasource Interview with Partha Chatterjee