Orientalism and the postcolonial predicament : perspectives on South Asia
"In his extraordinarily influential book Orientalism, Edward Said argued that Western knowledge about the Orient in the Post-Enlightenment period has been "a systematic discourse by which Europe was able to manage—even produce—the Orient politically, sociologically, militarily, ideologically, scientifically, and imaginatively." According to Said, European and American views of the Orient created a reality in which the Oriental was forced to live. Although Said's work deals primarily with discourse about the Arab world, much of his argument has been applied to other regions of "the Orient." Drawing on Said's book, Carol A. Breckenridge, Peter van der Veer, and the contributors to this book explore the ways colonial administrators constructed knowledge about the society and culture of India and the processes through which that knowledge has shaped past and present Indian reality. One common theme that links the essays in Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament is the proposition that Orientalist discourse is not just restricted to the colonial past but continues even today. The contributors argue that it is still extremely difficult for both Indians and outsiders to think about India in anything but strictly Orientalist terms. They propose that students of society and history rethink their methodologies and the relation between theories, methods, and the historical conditions that produced them"-- Publisher's website
Print Book, English, 1993
University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1993
Conference papers and proceedings
viii, 355 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.
9780812231687, 9780812214369, 0812231686, 0812214366
27431542
Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament / C.A. Breckenridge and P.van der Veer
The foreign hand: Orientalist discourse in Sociology / P.van der Veer
Orientalism and the Social Sciences / J. Lele
Deep Orientalism? Notes on Sanskrit and Power beyond the Raj / S. Pollock
The burden of English / G.C. Spivak
Orientalism and the study of Indian Literatures / V. Dharwadker
The fate of Hindustani: Colonial knowledge and the project of a National Language / D. Lelyveld
British Orientalism in the Eighteenth Century: The Dialectics of Knowledge and Government / R. Rocher
Orientalist Empiricism: Transformations of Colonial Knowledge / D. Ludden
Colonial Histories and Native Informants: Biography of an Archive / N.B. Dirks
Number in the Colonial Imagination / A. Appadurai
Index