ABSTRACT
'Writing Revolution' is concerned with the relationship between revolutionary politics and the act of writing in modern South Asia. This chapter argues that the act of writing demands interrogation in its own right, as a process and labour with distinct effects and consequences and with specific advantages and limitations. It identifies 'revolutionary writing' as a form of writing that emerges from both revolutionary and counter-revolutionary processes, occupying a spectrum that runs from incitement to containment. 'Writing Revolution' responds to and builds upon Kama Maclean's meditation on the question of what an archive for a 'revolutionary history' might look like. Maclean's work reveals a more intimate relationship between Congress nationalists and dissident revolutionary youth. It is also necessary to insist on the literary qualities of political writing. To write revolution is a practice that both inflects and confronts the shape and form of global modernity, creating particular aesthetic and political worlds.
