Author: Chandreyee Niyogi
Translator(s)/Editor: Chandreyee Niyogi
Publisher: Sage Publications
Year: 2006
Language: English
Pages: 295
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0761934472
Description
This collection of eleven original essays re-evaluates Edward Said's definition of orientalism widely misconstrued as being merely postcolonial and contestable. The volume emphasizes the need to move beyond the prejudice and stereotyping tied to the context of colonial exploitation. It challenges the assumption that oriental studies only served to segregate cultures and undermine the oriental peoples' capacity for self-formation.
This book shows how cultures can generate studies of themselves on their own and that the impetus for such work was clearly noticeable at least in Indian cultural scholarship during the colonial period. The contributors bring to light the orientals' ordering of themselves and expose the fallacy that western imperialist discourse defined and described us. In the process, they draw upon Said's distinction between oriental studies and orientalism.
Overall, this volume is a plea for reading Said all over again. It shows how best this can be done by offering a variety of readings of texts and events of our cultural past, either in dialogue with the west or just being themselves in their oriental locations. Either way, it calls for a reorientation. Its successful effort in that direction makes this volume of considerable interest and significance to students and scholars of literature, history, sociology and culture studies.
Contents
FOREWORD BY SUPRIYA CHAUDHURI
PREFACE
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
1. Iskandar, Alexander: Oriental geography and romantic poetry
KITTY SCOULAR DATTA
2. Oriental Gothic: the medieval past in the colonial encounter
ANANYA JAHANARA KABIR
3. The limits of orientalism: classical Indian dance and the discourse of heritage
PALLABI CHAKRAVORTY
4. Truth is, at the moment, here: Adrienne rich and the Ghazal
SONALI BARUA
5. Two occidental heroines through oriental eyes
PRODOSH BHATTACHARYA
6. Orientalism and its other(s): re-reading Marx on India
CHANDREYEE NIYOGI
7. Reading 'the poverty of India': a critical engagement with the Saidian interpretation of orientalism
SUDESHNA BANERJEE
8. Imaging the nature of the orient: some contradictions behind colonial forest policies in India
SUBHASIS BISWAS
9. Can we cross the Chasm? Agency and orientalist discourse in the colonial Tamil context
PERUNDEVI SRINIVASAN
10. The Octopodal idea: Vincent Smith, Oxford University Press and the histories of India
RIMI B CHATTERJEE
11. Undreamt by Tyrants and Orthodoxies: Edward said, orientalism and the politics of cyberspace
DAVID EWICK
ABOUT THE EDITOR AND CONTRIBUTORS
INDEX