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Alternative Be/Longing: Modernity And Material Culture In Bengali Cinema, 1947-1975, Suvadip Sinha

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Engaging in a dialogue with the recent body of scholarship on alternative/multiple modernities, postcolonial studies, Marxism and thing theory, this thesis has two main objectives: first, to examine how the transition of post-colonial India from a primarily feudal to a capitalist form of economy facilitated a historical-materialist relationship with things, objects and commodities; and second, to explore how this relationship challenges and ruptures the singularly hegemonic narrative of modern capital. Spanning a historical and political period from late-colonial India to the urban modernity of 1970s’, Satyajit Ray’s Jalsaghar (1958) and Pratidwandi (1971), Riwik Ghatak’s Ajantrik (1958), Tapan Sinha’s Harmonium (1963), …