The Postcolonial Orient

The Politics of Difference and the Project of Provincialising Europe
Erscheinungsjahr 2014
ISBN: 978-90-04-23186-3
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 68, 416 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 239 mm, Gewicht: 798 g

Reihe: Historical Materialism Book Series

In The Postcolonial Orient, Vasant Kaiwar presents a far-reaching analysis of the political, economic, and ideological cross-currents that have shaped and informed postcolonial studies preceding and following the 1989 moment of world history. The valences of the ‘post’ in postcolonialism are unfolded via some key historical-political postcolonial texts showing, inter alia, that they are replete with elements of Romantic Orientalism and the Oriental Renaissance. Kaiwar mobilises a critical body of classical and contemporary Marxism to demonstrate that far richer understandings of ‘Europe’ not to mention ‘colonialism’, ‘modernity’ and ‘difference’ are possible than with a postcolonialism captive to phenomenological-existentialism and post-structuralism, concluding that a narrative so enriched is indispensable for a transformative non-Eurocentric internationalism.

Zielgruppe

All interested in colonialism, modernity, and their ‘post’ forms, including postcolonial studies; Marx and Marxism. Also anyone concerned with Subaltern Studies, US multiculturalism, French theory and their interactions in the contemporary moment of world politics.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Kaiwar, Vasant

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Wissenschafts- und Universitätsgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Weltgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kultur- und Ideengeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Postkoloniale Geschichte, Nationale Befreiung und Unabhängigkeit
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein Politische Geschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Ideologien Marxismus, Kommunismus

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgements
Preface

1 Introduction
1.1 A narrative of arrival
1.2 1989 and all that
1.3 Postcolonial difference

2 Situating Postcolonial Studies
2.1 Definitions: Colonialism, for example
2.2 Postcolonial modernisation
2.3 Postcolonial populism
2.4 Subaltern Studies

3 Colonialism, Modernity, Postcolonialism
3.1 Colonialism and modernity in a postcolonial framing
3.2 History’s ironic reversals
3.3 Who is the ‘subaltern’ in postcolonial studies?

4 Provincialising Europe or Exoticising India? Towards a Historical and Categorial Critique of Postcolonial Studies
4.1 Marx and difference in Provincialising Europe
4.2 The not-yet of historicism
4.3 Why historicise?
4.4 Tattooed by the exotic
4.5 Under the sign of Heidegger, I: The woman’s question
4.6 Under the sign of Heidegger, II: Imagined communities
4.7 Lack/inadequacy or plenitude/creativity?
4.8 Dominance without hegemony: Historicism by another name?
4.9 The constituent elements of colonial modernity
4.10 Modernity as class struggle
4.11 Orientalism and nativism
4.12 Bahubol and the Muslim question

5 Uses and Abuses of Marx
5.1 Abstract labour, difference, History I and II
5.2 The piano maker and the piano player: Productive and unproductive labour
5.3 Millennial toil as the ‘nightmare of history’
5.4 ‘Bourgeois hegemony’ and colonial rule
5.5 Modernity in the ‘fullest sense’
5.6 Beyond the bourgeois revolution? Hegemony revisited
5.7 The historic moment of colonial dominance in India
5.8 A ‘liberation from blinding bondage’, or the question of historicism
5.9 Marxism and historicism

6 The Postcolonial Orient
6.1 The play of difference, the merchandising of the exotic, tradition and neo-traditionalism
6.2 The non-commissioned officers
6.3 The Orient as ‘vanishing mediator’
6.4 The unrenounceable project
6.5 Provincialising Europe

References
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Vasant Kaiwar, (Ph.D. UCLA, 1989), Visiting Associate Professor of History, Duke University; founder-editor, South Asia Bulletin (1981-93) and Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East (1993-2002); and co-editor, Antinomies of Modernity (2003) and From Orientalism to Postcolonialism (2009).