ABSTRACT
‘Filmic witness to terror’ identifies terrorism as a primary cultural marker of our contemporary world and cinema as a key artistic cultural respondent to it. In the Indian subcontinent, where the issue of terrorism is enigmatically both ‘singular’ and ‘common,’ dogged Hindi cinematic response has been swift and considerable. Noting the problematic of neutrality and ethicality in the representation of the ideology of terrorism, I propose the idea of postterrorism in cinema as a cultural attribute, already identified in the Indian novel in English in Troubled Testimonies (2016). In this volume, I propose to trace the rise and development of the postterrorist Hindi film, noting its implications for a reckoning of the nation and for an assessment of the role of filmmakers, commentators and critics and the audience. Backing theoretical postulations with extended textual analysis, I identify my critical option of a multiperspectival, interdisciplinary cultural studies approach to postterrorist cinema.
