Disaffected: Emotion, Sedition, and Colonial Law in the Anglosphere (2021)
Disaffected examines the effects of antisedition law on the overlapping public spheres of India and Britain under empire. After 1857, the British government began censoring the press in India, culminating in 1870 with the passage of Section 124a, a law that used the term “disaffection” to target the emotional tenor of writing deemed threatening to imperial rule. As a result, Indian journalists adopted modes of writing that appeared to mimic properly British styles of prose even as they wrote against empire.
Section 124a, still used to quell political dissent in present-day India, irrevocably shaped conversations and critiques in the colonial public sphere and continues to influence anticolonialism and postcolonial relationships between the state and the public. Disaffected draws out the coercive and emotional subtexts of law, literature, and cultural relationships, demonstrating how the criminalization of political alienation and dissent has shaped literary form and the political imagination.
Reviews
“Through detailed case studies of the periodical press in both Britain and India, Agathocleous compellingly explains how the redefinition of sedition—in terms of loyalty and disaffection—shaped both imperial power in late colonial period and the contours of Indian nationalism. In her careful attention to the circulation of periodicals, in the difficult work she has done in the vast archive of colonial print, and in creating a genuinely comparative theoretical framing, Agathocleous has provided scholars with a truly valuable resource.”
Review 19
Disaffected offers an intricate, dynamic account of the way legal culture works far beyond the remit of a legal statute with effects again, intended and unintended evident in our own legal cultures today. [It] is an exemplary work of legal cultural studies
Modern Philology
Tanya Agathocleous’s Disaffected is a splendid and important study of the promulgation and longstanding consequences of Section 124 A, the colonial-era law against disaffection in India. This timely, incisive book is a must-read!
Sukanya Banerjee, (University of California, Berkeley, author of Becoming Imperial Citizens)