Can Bengali Literature Be Postcolonial?

This paper explores the relation between Bengali literature and theories of postcolonialism. Vernacular, Bengali-language literature has been a significant inspiration for South Asian postcolonialist and comparativist concepts in the Anglo-American academy. This paper outlines the key literary figures and genealogies behind the development of postcolonial thought in West Bengal and Bangladesh. Various genres of poetry, drama, and fiction, aesthetic paradigms such as socialist and magical realism as well as internationalist and indigenous sources are examined, that enabled such a process across the twentieth century. A consideration of these aspects nuances the intellectual history of metropolitan postcolonialism, I argue, illuminating its erasures and appropriations.