Poetry is an 'affect' of the Emotional Habitus

This book will explore the centrality of poetry in the construction of the British-Bangladeshi identity. An examination of the relationship between language, politics and emotions in the case of the creation of Bangladesh, will make it clear that it is impossible to understand the Bengali identity without considering the social role of poetry in political activism. The paper will draw on elements of linguistic and cultural theory that share the theme of emotion and literature and their role in the construction and transformation of habitus. I will add to this by looking at it in the specific context of the use of poetry within British-Bangladeshi communities. This book discloses how a historical examination of the formation of the Bengali language reflects the culture and reality of immigration, colonialism and dispossession. In turn this will describe what experiential differences shape how the first and second generation British-Bangladeshi identity is enacted in the present UK society.