Alternative futures and the present: p0ostcolonial possibilities

Introduction : time, and the politics and poetics of alternative -- Karl Marx : colonialism, nation form, and social transformation -- Home, world, and an uncertain nation -- In the time of nations -- The problem of population : recalling Marx's critique of Malthus -- Populations and populism as a problematic in transformative politics -- Hegel's India and imperial imaginary of the universal -- Annihilation of caste and universalism of the oppressed -- Charles Tilly's theorising of contention -- Genocide : a most contentious word and concept of modern time -- The impossibility of politics : Brecht, Manto and two acts of literature -- Memories of the forgotten -- Settling account with the point of origin : Marx, Engels, and the Revolution of 1848 -- October Revolution as an alternative in the colonial and postcolonial time -- Occupy College Street, 1967-69 -- Crisis, biopolitics from below, and a new model of public power -- Layers of solidarity -- Epilogue.

This book explores the idea that alternatives to our present condition are available in the present, such that a search for alternatives must involve rigorous study of some of its central texts, events, and thinkers. Through engagement with selected modern thinkers, texts, and events, it imagines a different future from the position of the current postcolonial moment, indicating the possibilities that emerge from the present and which shape contemporary radical thinking. An invitation to imagine a possible future marked with alternative possibilities of conducting struggles, and living through contentions and social restructuring, it will appeal to scholars with interests in social and political theory, political philosophy, colonialism and postcolonialism, and historical materialism.