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.
Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament provides new and
important insights into the cultural embeddedness of power in the
colonial and postcolonial world.
