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| Publications [#291744] of Vasant Kaiwar
Papers Published
- Kaiwar, V, Colonialism, difference and exoticism in the formation of the postcolonial metanarrative,
in Pierre Guerlain and Thierry Madjid Labica (eds.), Perspectives transatlantiques sur les empires, Colloque organisé a l’université de Paris, X, Nanterre, Publications Paris X.
(2007), L’université de Caen
(last updated on 2023/07/05)
Abstract:
One of the central characteristics of postcolonial theory is the contention that colonialism—defined not so much as the history of the physical occupation and rule by European states of vast regions of the world beyond Europe but more so the attempted erasure or submergence of a whole host of life-worlds and ‘unbroken traditions’ that flourished in those regions until the arrival of modern Europe—is the defining experience of humanity in our epoch. Central to this theory is contention that traditions kept alive through generations have, by now, either been reduced to ‘history’ or simply assumed submerged forms in the consciousness and ‘world’ of the subalterns. Colonialism, with pre- and post-fixes, becomes the foundation of history, the category around which a virtual rather than historical periodisation is constructed; the postcolonial in some readings is said to originate in the first act of resistance to colonialism. However, since colonialism is defined as the usurpation of others’ life-worlds, there is no intrinsic reason why European colonization or the Enlightenment should be privileged. This privileging, one might assume, is purely strategic, related to where the postcolonial theorists are from and where they find themselves.
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