Darwinist premise in the Orientalist construction of the âOtherâ - JPCS

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Journal of Postcolonial Cultures and Societies ISSN No. 1948-1845 (Print); 1948-1853 (Electronic) various other races. J. F. Blumenbach argued in 1775 in his treatise On the Natural Variety of Mankind that the originary race of human beings were white and beautiful and that all present varieties descended from these, with the European or Caucasian as the least degenerate and the Ethiopian and Mongolian or Calmuck as the most degenerate (Bendyshe 269). These kinds of theorizing activities and inhuman assumptions endorsed by the Orientalists/colonialists have caused serious wounds and entailed huge and traumatic split to the concept of human coexistence. In addition to its dehumanization of the “Other”, the idea of the supremacy and superiority of the “West” has led to a process of displacement of history. By these terms I mean that the West has tried hard to dismiss and erase the history of the “Other” and to replace it with history written by the West. The argument of this paper is based on a historical sense of recasting and questioning the dominant forms of culture, in a sense that the struggle for history is a political endeavor and this would explain why postcolonial writers and critics seriously recognized the central relation between history, narrative and politics in their works. I have strongly observed that one of the legacies of Orientalism, and indeed one of its epistemological foundations, is historicism which means that the history of humanity either culminated in or was observed from the vantage point of Europe, or the West alone. Historicism is actually an essential component of a modern mode of thinking. We cannot conceive of modernity without historicism. The denial of other modes of knowledge is part and parcel of the Orientalist mindset. The multiplicity of the past is erased. Hence, it needs no further proof to say that Modernism, Historicism, Orientalism, Imperialism, Colonialism, and other Western “isms” all work on a Manichean logic and Darwinian concept of separation. Biography Both Mohamed Hamoud Kassim Al-Mahfedi and Venkatesh P work in the Department of English, University of Mysore in India. They specialize in postcolonial literature and theory. References Adas, M. Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology, and Ideologies of Western Dominance. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989. Anthias, Floya. “Cultural Racism or Racist Culture?”. Economy and Society. 24.2. 1995: ‘Darwinist premise in the Orientalist construction of the “Other”,’ Mohamed Hamoud Kassim Al- Mahfedi and Venkatesh P JPCS Vol 3, No 1, 2012 18
Journal of Postcolonial Cultures and Societies ISSN No. 1948-1845 (Print); 1948-1853 (Electronic) 279-301. Asad, Talal, et el. “Provocations of European Ethnology”. American Anthropologist. 99. 4 (Dec., 1997): 713-730< http://www.jstor.org/stable/682520> Accessed: 16/07/2009 Bendyshe, Thomas. Trans. and Ed. The Anthropological Treatises of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach. London: The Anthropological Society, 1865. Bhabha, H. K. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994. Blue, G. ‘‘China and Western Social Thought in the Modern Period.’’ in China and Historical Capitalism: Genealogies of Sinological Knowledge, ed. T. Brook and G. Blue. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. 57–281 Brownell, Susan. “Western-Centrism in Olympic Studies and Its Consequences in the 2008 Beijing Olympics”. Esporte e Sociedade , 4, 12( Jul.2009)1-20. Bruzonsky, Mark. "Jabotinsky The Legend and Its Power". Israel Horizons. 29. 2. (March/April) 1981. Burch, H. “Conditions Affecting the Suffrage in Colonies”. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 19. (1902): 78–101. Carroll, Joseph. Literary Darwinism Evolution, Human Nature, and Literature. New York and London: Routledge, 2004. Chatterjee, P. The Nation and its Fragments. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993. Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. San Diego: ICON Group International, Inc., 2005. –––. Lord Jim. San Diego: ICON Group International, Inc., 2005. Crook, P. Darwinism, War, and History: The Debate over the Biology of War Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Darwin, Charles. The Descent of Man. 2nd ed., New York: A. L. Burt Co., 1874. Dawson, Doyne. “Evolutionary Theory and Group Selection: The Question of Warfare”. History and Theory. 38 . 4. (Dec., 1999):79-100 < http://www.jstor.org/stable/2678059> Accessed: 01/02/2009 09:14 Encyclopedia Britannica, 1946 edition, volume 12, 1946 . Girardot, N. J. ‘‘The Course of Sinological Discourse: James Legge (1815–97) and the Nineteenth- Century Invention of Taoism’’ in Contacts between Cultures, ed. B. H.- K. Luk. New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1992. 188–93 Go, Julian. “Racism” and Colonialism: Meanings of Difference and Ruling Practices in America’s Pacific Empire”. Qualitative Sociology. 27. 1. (Spring 2004): 35-58. Griffith, John W. Joseph Conrad and the Anthropological Dilemma “Bewildered Traveller' Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995, reprinted. 1999. Hawkins, Mike. Social Darwinism in European and American Thought, 1860–1945: Nature as Model and Nature as Threat. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Hung, Ho-Fung. “Orientalist Knowledge and Social Theories: China and the European Conceptions of East-West Differences from 1600 to 1900”. Sociological Theory. 21.3 (September 2003):254-280. Huxley, Thomas. Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews. New York: Appleton, 1871. ‘Darwinist premise in the Orientalist construction of the “Other”,’ Mohamed Hamoud Kassim Al- Mahfedi and Venkatesh P JPCS Vol 3, No 1, 2012 19
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