Colonial Voices

Nayar, Pramod K.:
Colonial Voices : the Discourses of Empire / Pramod K. Nayar. - Malden, Mass. : Wiley-Blackwell, 2012. - ca. 272 S.
ISBN 978-1-4443-3856-0
US$ 99,95 / £ 66,95 / EUR 80,40
DDC: 820.93585403; 954.03

Beschreibung
This accessible cultural history explores 400 years of British imperial adventure in India, developing a coherent narrative through a wide range of colonial documents, from exhibition catalogues to memoirs and travelogues. It shows how these texts helped legitimize the moral ambiguities of colonial rule even as they helped the English fashion themselves.

• An engaging examination of European colonizers’ representations of native populations
• Analyzes colonial discourse through an impressive range of primary sources, including memoirs, letters, exhibition catalogues, administrative reports, and travelogues
• Surveys 400 years of India’s history, from the 16th century to the end of the British Empire
• Demonstrates how colonial discourses naturalized the racial and cultural differences between the English and the Indians, and controlled anxieties over these differences

Inhalt
Acknowledgments vii
1. Introducing Colonial Discourse. 1
2. Travel, Exploration, and "Discovery": From Imagination to Inquiry. 12
   Imagining Multiple Worlds: The Fantasy of "Discovery". 18
   The Narrative Organization of Discovery. 29
   "Inquiry" and the Documentation of the Others. 41
   Conclusion: "Discovery" and Wonder, "Contracted and Epitomized". 49
3. The Discourse of Difference: Constructing the Colonial Exotic. 55
   The Colony and Imperial Wealth. 57
   The Exotic in English Culture. 59
   The Colonial Exotic: Aesthetics, Science, and Difference. 60
   The Sentimental Exotic. 62
   The Scientific Exotic. 79
   Conclusion: From the Indian to the Colonial Exotic. 95
4. Empire Management: From Domestication to Spectacle. 104
   The Domestication of Colonial Spaces. 106
   Administering Colonial Spaces. 121
   "Raising the General Credit of the Empire": The Spectacle of Empire. 140
   Conclusion: Imperial Improvisation and the Spectacle. 145
5. Civilizing the Empire: The Ideology of Moral and Material Progress. 161
   England's Age of Improvement. 164
   Discipline and Improve. 170
   Imperial Lessons. 174
   The Salvific Colonial. 178
   Rescue, Reform, and Race. 183
   Conclusion: From Improvement to Self-Legitimization. 194
6. Aesthetic Understanding: From Colonial English to Imperial Cosmopolitans. 201
   The Self-Fashioning of the Scholar-Colonial. 204
   Antiquarian Aesthetics and Colonial Authority. 213
   "Consumption, Ingestion, and Decoration": Colonial Commodities. 219
   The "Empire City": Pageantry and Empire. 226
   Conclusion: From Colonial English to Imperial Cosmopolitan. 229
References. 235
Index. 260

Autor

PRAMOD K. NAYAR is a member of the English Faculty at the University of Hyderabad, India. He has been Smuts Visiting Fellow in Commonwealth Studies at the University of Cambridge, the Charles Wallace India Trust–British Council Fellow at the University of Kent at Canterbury and Fulbright Senior Fellow at Cornell University. His many publications include States of Sentiment: Exploring the Cultures of Emotion (2011), An Introduction to New Media and Cybercultures (2010), Postcolonialism: A Guide for the Perplexed (2010), English Writing and India, 1600–1920: Colonizing Aesthetics (2008), and Writing Wrongs: The Cultural Construction of Human Rights in India (2012). Forthcoming is a book on new media. Academia.edu profile; Homepage.

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