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Part of
Emotion in Texts for Children and Young Adults: Moving stories
Edited by Karen Coats and Gretchen Papazian
[Children’s Literature, Culture, and Cognition 13] 2023
► pp. 152–169

Chapter 7
The cultural politics of confidence in Chetan Bhagat’s select fiction

Language and nation in twenty-first century India

| University of Delhi
Chetan Bhagat’s fiction were not only immensely popular at the beginning of the twenty-first century among India’s young adults, but they also highlight a new Indian subjectivity that believes in the ethos of enterprise and an attitude of get-up-and-go. For this young generation, self-actualization is tied to national aggrandizement in inextricable ways. The chapter argues that an entanglement such as this is affective in nature. To be more precise, in portraying plotlines and characters that emphasize futurity, both personal and national, Chetan Bhagat’s fiction works by attuning youth to the emotion of confidence. In employing a vocal, oral, vernacular, and intimate English in his narrations, Bhagat’s writings capacitate young people to achieve maturation in post-liberalization India, to experience confidence in one’s language, and to find their place in the world.
Keywords: confidence, self-actualization, post-liberalization, self-improvement, futurity, subjectivity, entrepreneurial, ethos, attachment, nation, sociality, emotion, feeling, affect, youth, confidence, intensity, colloquial, vernacular, local, English, register, doing
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • History and emotion, twenty-first century India and the emotion confidence
  • Confidence and futurity through language in Bhagat’s novels: Young India’s national identity
  • Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 6 January 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/clcc.13.07dog
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