Colonial Voices (eBook)

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.

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

"Nayar makes the field of 'colonial discourse studies' irresistible
to anyone seeking to explore the complex relationship between
textual production, (South) Asian Orientalism, and the politics of
empire building."

- Walter S. H. Lim, National University of Singapore



"Drawing on an enormous range of writing, Dr. Nayar provides a
lucid and nuanced analysis of British representations of India as a
continent to be discovered, controlled, 'civilized',
and incorporated. This important book by one of India's
leading scholars gives students and scholars a significantly new
understanding of the complex nature and history of colonial
discourse regarding India."

- C.L.Innes, University of Kent

"A theoretical and historical perspective on colonial
discourse...an impressive demonstration of the nature and power
of discourse using an array of texts from the archive of British
India."

- Nandana Dutta, Gauahati University