On Orientalism by Ronald Davidson. Quote: Moreover, it has become part of one intellectual trend to assume that the eighteenth to twentieth centuries were dedicated to the purpose of providing us with a perception of the world, so that Euro-American colonialism could move forward in its need for universal power. This proposal supposes that all traditional academic writing is grounded in, and tainted by, an imperialistic civilization whose discourse embodies its method of securing power over its colonial objects. Such rhetoric, particularly among intellectuals from the Middle East and India, employs the position of the Orientalist critique, a manner dismissing Western critical evaluation of non-Western realities, particularly historical realities. Motivated by the works of Edward Said and others, critics of Orientalism have defined it as including the academic persons (Orientalists), the style of thought, and the corporate institution of the academy. Irrespective of method or direction, we are informed, those of the West cannot help but express the power differential between India and the Euro-American academy. During the empire, this was done to define the West as essentially different from and legitimately in dominion over the Orient. Since history and Indology arose at this time, neither can be extracted from a discourse of modernity that expresses power over Asia, if only because of the media and geopolitical realities of the present. Members of the Subaltern Studies collective like Chakrabarty have furthermore maintained that “Europe remains the sovereign, theoretical subject of all histories.” According to this idea, any discipline claiming all of humanity as its domain is by definition Eurocentric. Thus not only the person of the foreign historian but the very discipline of history itself colonizes India. Ronald M. Davidson, Indian Estoeric Buddhism A Social History of the Tantric Movement (Delhi, India: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, 2004), 10-11.
Posted on: Sat, 19 Apr 2014 10:27:50 +0000
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