Edward Said and the Cultural History of British Colonialism in India

Download or read book Edward Said and the Cultural History of British Colonialism in India written by Moritz Deutschmann and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2011-01-12 with total page 14 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essay from the year 2009 in the subject History - Basics, European University Institute (Department of History, Florenz), language: English, abstract: This text discusses the role of culture in the history of European colonialism. It takes Said's notion of "Orientalism" as a starting point. It then discusses two very different books that have tried to make Said's notion useful for the study of concrete colonial situations: Christopher Bayly's "Empire and Information", and Nicholas Dirks' "Castes of Mind". Whereas Bayly's concept of an "information order" tries to undermine ideas about a European hegemony of knowledge, Dirks stresses the far-reaching influence European concepts had even on post-colonial notions of caste in India.