Anticipating post-postcolonialism
Recently on Facebook, an old friend who is now a professor promoted a new series of essays to which she contributed. She noted that this is a history which “…place enslavement, colonialism, and indigenous removal at the center…” Some of the analyses clearly take postcolonialism for granted, where the contact with and shock of European […]
The blood on brown hands is a legacy of all of history
Yesterday I put up a tweet which went a bit viral (I won’t embed since it has a vulgarity). It was the result of my frustration with a very liberal Indian American who was using unfortunate tensions in the Indian subcontinent to attack “white supremacy.” My frustration was due to the reality that a major […]
Postcolonial imperialism
Rereading Edward Said’s Orientalism I am struck by the fact that he’s a very good writer compared to his heirs in postcolonial studies. As someone who cites Foucault, it is natural that there is a fair amount of vapid but lexically textured passages in Orientalism (you can open up any page and stumble upon a polished […]
Hinduism was not invented by the British (or Muslims)
I’m reading a book titled The Idea of the Muslim World: A Global Intellectual History. It’s works within the postcolonial framework. Unlike a lot of postcolonial scholarship it isn’t bluster and rhetoric riddled with basic historical errors. The author presents a lot of interesting facts. But, as I’ve said elsewhere I disagree with the thesis … Continue reading “Hinduism was not invented by the British (or Muslims)”
Postcolonialism as theory often fails; it would be nice to actually know something
The cognitive psychologist Pascal Boyer introduced me to the phrase “theory is information for free.” It’s a succinct way of saying that if you have a theoretical framework you can deduce and extrapolate a lot about the world without having to know everything. And, you can take new information and fit it quickly into your […]
It takes a village to murder
In a small follow up to Zach’s post on honor-killing. Let’s reiterate something: individuals are responsible for horrendous crimes, and their acts of horror reflect their own choices. But choices don’t occur in a vacuum. Most people are conformist, and … Continue reading →
Barbarians on the blog!
Omar says below: Razib Re Anurag, As someone who once more or less took for granted all that Anurag has written, I have a few observations: 1. These beliefs are integral parts of a certain “elite” Brown worldview that is … Continue reading →
When gods become demons
This comment is interesting to me: —yes, a pox on poco jargon. Virtually every kind of high culture (be it performance or visual art) in South Asia has been almost entirely reinvented in the past century (with help from white devils), though in the poco academy it remains shrouded in the mists of hoary antiquity, […]