149
Views
0
CrossRef citations to date
0
Altmetric
Research Article

Hydrosocial Precarity and Postmillennial Indian Fiction: Reading Prayaag Akbar’s Leila

& ORCID Icon
Received 26 Dec 2022, Accepted 08 Jul 2023, Published online: 20 Jul 2023

Works cited

  • Akbar, Prayaag. 2017. Leila. New Delhi, India: Simon and Schuster.
  • Anand, Nikhil. 2016. “Hydraulic Publics.” Academia.edu. July 26. https://www.academia.edu/27281822/Hydraulic_Publics.
  • Anand, Nikhil. 2012. “Municipal Disconnect: On Abject Water and Its Urban Infrastructures.” Ethnography 13 (4): 487–509. https://doi.org/10.1177/1466138111435743
  • Anand, Nikhil. 2017. Hydraulic City: Water and the Infrastructures of Citizenship in Mumbai. Durham: Duke University Press.
  • Anand, Nikhil, Akhil Gupta, and Hannah Appel. 2018. The Promise of Infrastructure. Durham, USA: Duke University Press.
  • Bakker, Karen J. 2000. “Privatizing Water, Producing Scarcity: The Yorkshire Drought of 1995.” Economic Geography 76 (1): 4–27. https://doi.org/10.2307/144538
  • Bakker, Karen J. 2003. “A Political Ecology of Water Privatization.” Studies in Political Economy 70 (1): 35–58. https://doi.org/10.1080/07078552.2003.11827129
  • Bakker, Karen J. 2005. “Neoliberalizing Nature? Market Environmentalism in Water Supply in England and Wales.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 95 (3): 542–565. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8306.2005.00474.x
  • Bakker, Karen J. 2012. “Water: Political, Biopolitical, Material.” Social Studies of Science 42 (4): 616–623. https://doi.org/10.1177/0306312712441396.
  • Banerjee, Sarnath. 2015. All Quiet in Vikaspuri. Noida, Uttar Pradesh: HarperCollins Publishers India.
  • Björkman, Lisa. 2015. Pipe Politics, Contested Waters: Embedded Infrastructures of Millennial Mumbai. Minion, USA: Duke University Press.
  • Boast, Hannah. 2020. Hydrofictions: Water, Power and Politics in Israeli and Palestinian Literature. Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press.
  • Bob, Jessop. 1990. “Regulation Theories in Retrospect and Prospect.” Economy and Society 19 (2): 153–216. https://doi.org/10.1080/03085149000000006
  • Boelens, Rutgerd, Jaime Hoogesteger, Erik Swyngedouw, Jeroen Vos, and Philippus Wester. 2016. “Hydrosocial Territories: A Political Ecology Perspective.” Water International 41 (1): 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1080/02508060.2016.1134898
  • Bourdieu, Pierre. 1979. Algeria 1960: The Disenchantment of the World. Translated by Richard Nice. New York: Cambridge University Press.
  • Bouzarovski, Stefan, Michael Bradshaw, and Alexander Wochnik. 2015. “Making Territory through Infrastructure: The Governance of Natural Gas Transit in Europe.” Geoforum 64: 217–228. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2015.06.022
  • Butler, Judith. 2016. Frames of War: When is Life Grievable? New York/London: Verso.
  • Chen, Cecilia, Janine MacLeod, and Astrida Neimanis. 2013. “Introduction: Towards a Hydrological Turn?” Introduction.” In Thinking with Water. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
  • Cho, Lily. 2009. “Citizenship, Diaspora and the Bonds of Affect: The Passport Photograph.” Photography and Culture 2 (3): 275–287. https://doi.org/10.2752/175145109X12532077132310
  • Claeys, Gregory. 2018. Dystopia: A Natural History. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • D’Souza, Rohan. 2006. “Water in British India: The Making of a ‘Colonial Hydrology.” History Compass 4 (4): 621–628. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1478-0542.2006.00336.x
  • Dasgupta, Pallabee. 2016. “From the ‘Real’ to the ‘Hyperreal’: A Study of the Postmodern and Dystopian Cityscape in Ruchir Joshi’s The Last Jet-Engine Laugh and Prayaag Akbar’s Leila.” MELOW: The Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the World. https://melow.in/index.php/article/55.html.
  • Deckard, Sharae. 2019. “Water Shocks: Neoliberal Hydrofiction and the Crisis of ‘Cheap Water.” Atlantic Studies 16 (1): 108–125. https://doi.org/10.1080/14788810.2017.1412181
  • Doshi, Sapana, and Malini Ranganathan. 2017. “Contesting the Unethical City: Land Dispossession and Corruption Narratives in Urban India.” Annals of the American Association of Geographers 107 (1): 183–199. https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2016.1226124
  • Dossal, Mariam. 1991. Imperial Designs and Indian Realities: The Planning of Bombay City, 1845-1875. Bombay: Oxford University Press.
  • Drew, Georgina. 2020. “Political Ecologies of Water Capture in an Indian ‘Smart City.” Ethnos 85 (3): 435–453. https://doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2018.1541918
  • eShe. 2018. ““Why Must Women Restrict Themselves to Writing on ‘Feminine Subjects’?” Asks Veena Nagpal.” EShe: The Female Gaze. March 18. https://eshe.in/2018/03/18/veena-nagpal-radius-200/.
  • Flaminio, Silvia, Gaële Rouillé-Kielo, and Selin Le Visage. 2022. “Waterscapes and Hydrosocial Territories: Thinking Space in Political Ecologies of Water.” Progress in Environmental Geography 1275396872211067. (1-4): 33–57. https://doi.org/10.1177/27539687221106796
  • Foucault, Michele. 1980. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977. Hemel Hempstead, Herts: Harvester Press.
  • Foucault, Michele. 1988. “Social Security.” In Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews and Other Writings, 1977-1984, edited by Lawrence D. Kritzman, 159–177. New York: Routledge.
  • Foucault, Michele. 2000. “Governmentality.” In Power, edited by Paul Rabinow and James D. Faubion, 201–222. New York: The New Press.
  • Gandy, Matthew. 2008. “Landscapes of Disaster: Water, Modernity, and Urban Fragmentation in Mumbai.” Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 40 (1): 108–130. https://doi.org/10.1068/a3994
  • Ghertner, D. Asher. 2011. “Gentrifying the State, Gentrifying Participation: Elite Governance Programs in Delhi.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 35 (3): 504–532. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2011.01043.x
  • Gopakumar, Govind. 2012. Transforming Urban Water Supplies in India: The Role of Reform and Partnership in Globalization. London: Routledge.
  • Hassan, John. 1998. A History of Water in Modern England and Wales. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
  • Heath, Deana, and Stephen Legg. 2018. “Introducing South Asian Governmentalities.” In South Asian Governmentalities: Michel Foucault and the Question of Postcolonial Orderings, edited by Stephen Legg and Deana Heath, 1–36. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
  • Hecht, Gabrielle. 2001. “Technology, Politics, and National Identity in France.” Chapter. In Technologies of Power: Essays in Honor of Thomas Parke Hughes and Agatha Chipley Hughes, edited by Michael Thad Allen and Gabrielle Hecht, 253–294. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
  • Herrero, Dolores. 2020. “Populism and Precarity in Contemporary Indian Dystopian Fiction: Nayantara Sahgal’s When the Moon Shines by Day and Prayaag Akbar’s Leila.” Atlantis. Journal of the Spanish Association for Anglo-American Studies 42 (2): 214–232. https://doi.org/10.28914/Atlantis-2020-42.2.11
  • Hidalgo-Bastidas, Juan, and Rutgerd Boelens. 2019. “Hydraulic Order and the Politics of the Governed: The Baba Dam in Coastal Ecuador.” Water 11 (3): 409. https://doi.org/10.3390/w11030409
  • Hodges, Sarah. 2018. “Plastic History, Caste and the Government of Things in Modern India.” In South Asian Governmentalities Michel Foucault and the Question of Postcolonial Orderings, edited by Stephen Legg and Deana Heath, 178–199. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
  • Hofmeyr, Isabel, Sarah Nuttall, and Charne Lavery. 2022. “Reading for Water.” Interventions 24 (3): 303–322. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369801X.2021.2015711
  • Hommes, Lena, Jaime Hoogesteger, and Rutgerd Boelens. 2022. “(Re)Making Hydrosocial Territories: Materializing and Contesting Imaginaries and Subjectivities through Hydraulic Infrastructure.” Political Geography 97: 102698. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2022.102698
  • Hommes, Lena, Rutgerd Boelens, Sonja Bleeker, Bibiana Duarte-Abadía, Didi Stoltenborg, and Jeroen Vos. 2020. “Water Governmentalities: The Shaping of Hydrosocial Territories, Water Transfers and Rural–Urban Subjects in Latin America.” Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space 3 (2): 399–422. https://doi.org/10.1177/2514848619886255
  • Jazeel, Tariq. 2014. “Subaltern Geographies: Geographical Knowledge and Postcolonial Strategy.” Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 35 (1): 88–103. https://doi.org/10.1111/sjtg.12053
  • Jensen, Casper Bruun, and Atsuro Morita. 2017. “Introduction: Infrastructures as Ontological Experiments.” Ethnos 82 (4): 615–626. https://doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2015.1107607
  • Joshy, Hridhya. 2019. “Plight of Women in a Dystopian Society: Discourse on Power and Surveillance in Leila.” Essay.” In Re-Mapping Identity, Culture and History through Literature, edited by Sushil Mary Mathews and M. Angeline, 62–65. Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh India: Veda Publications.
  • Joyce, Patrick. 2003. The Rule of Freedom: Liberalism and the Modern City. London: Verso.
  • Kaika, Maria. 2006. “Dams as Symbols of Modernization: The Urbanization of Nature between Geographical Imagination and Materiality.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 96 (2): 276–301. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8306.2006.00478.x
  • Khan, Sami Ahmad. 2019. “Dom(e)Inating India’s Tomorrow(s)? Global Climate Change in Select Anglophonic Narratives.” Fafnir – Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research 6 (2): 25–37. http://journal.finfar.org/articles/1936.pdf.
  • Kooy, Michelle, and Karen Bakker. 2008. “Technologies of Government: Constituting Subjectivities, Spaces, and Infrastructures in Colonial and Contemporary Jakarta.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 32 (2): 375–391. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2008.00791.x
  • Kuldova, Tereza Østbø. 2022. “Thinking the Delirious Pandemic Governance by Numbers with SamitBasu’sChosen Spirits and Prayaag Akbar’s Leila.” Journal of Postcolonial Writing 58 (2): 167–182. https://doi.org/10.1080/17449855.2022.2040801
  • Larkin, Brian. 2013. “The Politics and Poetics of Infrastructure.” Annual Review of Anthropology 42 (1): 327–343. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-anthro-092412-155522
  • Lefebvre, Henri. 2009. The Production of Space. Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
  • Legg, Stephen. 2007. Spaces of Colonialism:Delhi’s Urban Governmentalities. Malden, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
  • Linton, Jamie. 2010. What is Water? Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.
  • Loftus, Alex. 2009. “Rethinking Political Ecologies of Water.” Third World Quarterly 30 (5): 953–968. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436590902959198
  • Lorey, Isabell. 2015. State of Insecurity: Government of the Precarious. New York: Verso.
  • Madan, Anuja. 2018. “Slow Violence and Water Racism in Sarnath Banerjee’s All Quiet in Vikaspuri.” South Asian Review 39 (1-2): 125–143. https://doi.org/10.1080/02759527.2018.1509548
  • Mukherjee, Jenia. 2021. Blue Infrastructures: Natural History, Political Ecology and Urban Development in Kolkata. Singapore: Springer Nature.
  • Neimanis, Astrida. 2017. Bodies of Water: Posthuman Feminist Phenomenology. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.
  • Nuttall, Sarah. 2018. “Afterword.” In Planned Violence: Post/Colonial Urban Infrastructure, Literature and Culture, edited by Elleke Boehmer and Dominic Davies, 331–340. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Ong, Aihwa, Virginia R. Dominguez, Jonathan Friedman, Nina Glick Schiller, Verena Stolcke, and Hu Ying. 1996. “Cultural Citizenship as Subject-Making: Immigrants Negotiate Racial and Cultural Boundaries in the United States [and Comments and Reply].” Current Anthropology 37 (5): 737–762. https://doi.org/10.1086/204560
  • Rogers, Sarah, and Britt Crow‐Miller. 2017. “The Politics of Water: A Review of Hydropolitical Frameworks and Their Application in China.” WIREs Water.4 (6):1–12. https://doi.org/10.1002/wat2.1239
  • Roy, Deya. 2013. “Negotiating Marginalities: Right to Water in Delhi.” Urban Water Journal 10 (2): 97–104. https://doi.org/10.1080/1573062X.2012.709254
  • Sekhar, Arya, and R. S. Anusudha. 2019. “Prayaag Akbar’s Leila as an Illustration of the Tussle of the Humane to Survive in a Reign of Sub-Humans.” Literary Endeavour 10 (1): 162–168. https://www.literaryendeavour.org/files/k2irwjf7w2qbprtlzhl6/2019-01%2029.PRAYAAG%20AKBAR%E2%80%99S%20LEILA%20AS%20AN%20ILLUSTRATION%20OF%20TUSSLE%20OF%20THE%20HUMANE%20TO%20SURVIVE%20IN%20A%20REIGN%20OF%20SUB-HUMANS.pdf.
  • Sen, Atreyee, Raminder Kaur, and Emilija Zabiliūtė. 2020. “(En)Countering Sexual Violence in the Indian City.” Gender, Place & Culture 27 (1): 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2019.1612856
  • Shekar, Anjana. 2019. “Revisiting ‘Thanneer’, Ashokamitran’s Insightful Tamil Novel on Water Scarcity.” The News Minute. August 11. https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/revisiting-thanneer-ashokamitrans-insightful-tamil-novel-water-scarcity-107043.
  • Shiva, Vandana. 2016. Water Wars: Privatization, Pollution, and Profit. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.
  • Swyngedouw, Erik, Maria Kaika, and Esteban Castro. 2002. “Urban Water: A Political-Ecology Perspective.” Built Environment 28 (2): 124–137. https://doi.org/10.2307/23288796
  • Swyngedouw, Erik. 1999. “Modernity and Hybridity: Nature, Regeneracionismo, and the Production of the Spanish Waterscape, 1890–1930.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 89 (3): 443–465. https://doi.org/10.1111/0004-5608.00157
  • Truelove, Yaffa. 2011. “(Re-)Conceptualizing Water Inequality in Delhi, India through a Feminist Political Ecology Framework.” Geoforum 42 (2): 143–152. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2011.01.004
  • Usher, Mark. 2022. “Territory, Hydraulics, Biopolitics: Internal Colonization through Urban Catchment Management in Singapore.” Territory, Politics, Governance : 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/21622671.2022.2056503
  • Varughese, E. Dawson. 2021. “Post-Millennial Indian Dystopian Fiction: A Developing Canon of Precarity, (Im)Purity and Ideas of India(Nness).” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 44 (6): 1041–1055. https://doi.org/10.1080/00856401.2021.1972258
  • Von Schnitzler, Antina. 2008. “Citizenship Prepaid: Water, Calculability, and Techno-Politics in South Africa.” Journal of Southern African Studies 34 (4): 899–917. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057070802456821
  • Yazell, Bryan. 2018. “The Politics of Precarity in William Gibson’s Bridge Trilogy.” Studies in the Fantastic 6 (1): 39–69. https://doi.org/10.1353/sif.2018.0002

Reprints and Corporate Permissions

Please note: Selecting permissions does not provide access to the full text of the article, please see our help page How do I view content?

To request a reprint or corporate permissions for this article, please click on the relevant link below:

Academic Permissions

Please note: Selecting permissions does not provide access to the full text of the article, please see our help page How do I view content?

Obtain permissions instantly via Rightslink by clicking on the button below:

If you are unable to obtain permissions via Rightslink, please complete and submit this Permissions form. For more information, please visit our Permissions help page.