On the margins of post-coloniality: Vilas Sarang's work and the politics of reception

This dissertation seeks to find some newnesses or unmapped territories in the discursive formations of post-colonial cultural productions. These unmapped spaces can be the sites of loss or productive change because they are situated beyond nationalism, manicheanism and hybridity. As a means of pointing to these spaces, I have used the work of Vilas Sarang, a bilingual and diasporic Indian writer in English. Vilas Sarang's marginal position in Indian English literature is also analysed to discuss how different models of postcolonial literatures create hierarchies and canons even when they are operating against them. Originary, essentialist and classical notions of representation, identity and culture are seen to be informing the reception of Sarang's work.