Culture and Imperialism

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In other words Colonialism is: “Now we (The colonizer) own you (The colonized), your land, and we will be exploiting your economic resources to our benefit using brute force. But its worst and most paradoxical gift was to allow people to believe that they were only, mainly, exclusively, white, or Black, or Western, or Oriental.

Culture and Imperialism is also published in an era following the fall of the Berlin wall and invasion of Iraq where Western Universalism is under direct criticism. In obnoxiously simplified terms, he’s a ‘middle of the road’ guy, all about acknowledging both the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ in a work of art. He exhorts them to transcend their national interests and see common interests and values across the rest of the world. Foucault, perhaps because of his disenchantment with both the insurrections of the 1960s and the Iranian Revolution, swerves away from politics entirely.An eye opening read for anyone interested not only in literature but historiography and post colonialism. He gives an example from Kipling’s Kim, where Kipling has the widow of Kula says, when a District Superintendent of Police walks by, that These be the sort to oversee justice. Fox and Partha Chatterjee suggest crucial modifications of Said’s opposition between the West and the colonized, arguing that nationalist opposition developed out of Western orientalist constructs. Said’s Culture and Imperialism” (1993) is kind of a sequel to his earlier book, now a classic, ‘Orientalism’ (1978).

As a foundational text, Orientalism was controversial among the scholars of Oriental Studies, philosophy, and literature. Where the book gets more morally complicated though is in dealing with the different phases of the colonizer’s reaction to imperialism and particularly the revolutionary violence and subsequent oftentimes very oppressive regimes it engenders.Ghazoul places Said’s approach within traditions of Zahirite Koranic interpretation, which emphasized event and context. Considered ground-breaking when first published, this book now comes across as a little dated and jaded in its outlook. I could not help thinking about what Edward Said would make of social media today: Would he perhaps have thought that an app like twitter only reinforces the regulation of public discussion and mainstream culture? This brought forth the realization that it would have to take an American a "personal interest" to choose to read "something else. Each sentence in this book is crafted from a large vocabulary to convey exactly what the author intends.

and all kinds of preparations are made for it within a culture; then, in turn, imperialism acquires a kind of coherence, a set of experiences, and a presence of ruler and ruled alike within the culture. Said actually develops the technique of ‘contrapuntal reading’ of the literature of the colonizer and the colonized and does an excellent job of applying it in practice. Both of these intellectuals seem to have battled with their identities in exile and came out with similar perceptions of how it is through “fear and prejudice” that patriotism and intolerance are made up.While The New York Times review notes the book's heavy resemblance to a collection of lectures, it concludes that "Yet that telegraphic style does not finally mar either the usefulness of 'Culture and Imperialism' or its importance. Dense and sometimes irritatingly circular in logic, this book is still a fantastic piece of examining postcolonial literary theory. He makes countless citations of literary work from different parts of the world, and he analyzes the literature so seriously that it almost seems like he’s the only one in class paying attention. that said's reading of austen overasssumes that mansfield park's titular estate is rendered a site of social harmony.