Forthcoming from Duke University Press’s Theory in Forms series (co-edited by Achille Mbembe, Nancy Rose Hunt, and Todd Meyers), Nienke Boer’s The Briny South: Displacement and Sentiment in the Indian Ocean World is one of the many excellent titles we have recently indexed at Southwest Humanities. In this pathbreaking work, “Boer examines the legal and literary narratives of enslaved, indentured, and imprisoned individuals crossing the Indian Ocean to analyze the formation of racialized identities in the imperial world. Drawing on court records, ledgers, pamphlets, censors’ reports, newsletters, folk songs, memoirs, and South African and South Asian works of fiction and autobiography, Boer theorizes the role of sentiment and the depiction of emotions in the construction of identities of displaced peoples across the Indian Ocean.” Combining analysis of broader histories and close readings of texts, Boer’s book will be a welcome contribution to debates on empire and subjectivity in the colonial world of the Indian Ocean. Please take a look at the publisher’s website here for more information.
SOUTHWEST HUMANITIES 