Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-5c6d5d7d68-lvtdw Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-08-26T12:52:14.788Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

3 - The fetish of ‘the West’ in postcolonial theory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2009

Neil Lazarus
Affiliation:
Professor of English and Comparative Literary Studies Warwick University
Crystal Bartolovich
Affiliation:
Syracuse University, New York
Neil Lazarus
Affiliation:
University of Warwick
Get access

Summary

In a commentary entitled “East isn't East,” which appeared not long ago in the Times Literary Supplement, Edward Said proposed that one of the essential gestures of postcolonial criticism, and one of its enduring achievements, rested in what he called its “consistent critique of Eurocentrism” (1995: 5). In the pages that follow, I would like to put some pressure on this assessment. My intention is not, of course, to suggest that the postcolonialist critique of Eurocentrism has not been significant in helping to expose the tendentiousness, chauvinism, and sheer pervasiveness of the ideological formation that Said himself, in his seminal study of 1978, addressed under the rubric of Orientalism. I take it for granted that it has, and believe moreover that to argue otherwise would be simply perverse. Rather, my aim in this chapter is to suggest that in the field of postcolonial studies at large, including in the work of some of the field's most audacious and theoretically sophisticated practitioners, Eurocentrism has typically been viewed not as an ideology or mode of representation but as itself the very basis of domination in the colonial and modern imperial contexts. Setting out from this strictly idealist conceptualization, postcolonial theorists have sought to produce an anti-Eurocentric – or, in Gyan Prakash's (1990) preferred terminology, a “post-Orientalist” – scholarship.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2002

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×