Del i serien SUNY series, The Margins of Literature

Aryans, Jews, Brahmins

Theorizing Authority through Myths of Identity

Häftad, Engelska, 2002

569 kr

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Explores the construction of the Aryan myth and its uses in both India and Europe.In Aryans, Jews, Brahmins, Dorothy M. Figueira provides a fascinating account of the construction of the Aryan myth and its uses in both India and Europe from the Enlightenment to the twentieth century. The myth concerns a race that inhabits a utopian past and gives rise first to Brahmin Indian culture and then to European culture. In India, notions of the Aryan were used to develop a national identity under colonialism, one that allowed Indian elites to identify with their British rulers. It also allowed non-elites to set up a counter identity critical of their position in the caste system. In Europe, the Aryan myth provided certain thinkers with an origin story that could compete with the Biblical one and could be used to diminish the importance of the West's Jewish heritage. European racial hygienists made much of the myth of a pure Aryan race, and the Nazis later looked at India as a cautionary tale of what could happen if a nation did not remain "pure."As Figueira demonstrates, the history of the Aryan myth is also a history of reading, interpretation, and imaginative construction. Initially, the ideology of the Aryan was imposed upon absent or false texts. Over time, it involved strategies of constructing, evoking, or distorting the canon. Each construction of racial identity was concerned with key issues of reading: canonicity, textual accessibility, interpretive strategies of reading, and ideal readers. The book's cross-cultural investigation demonstrates how identities can be and are created from texts and illuminates an engrossing, often disturbing history that arose from these creations.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2002-09-26
Mått152 x 228 x 15 mm
Vikt345 g
FormatHäftad
SpråkEngelska
SerieSUNY series, The Margins of Literature
Antal sidor217
FörlagState University of New York Press
ISBN9780791455326

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Acknowledgments Introduction Shared MythsThe Aryan CanonMethodology and Plan Part I. The Authority of an Absent Text 1. The Enlightenment and Orientalist Discourse on the Aryan The Enlightenment BackgroundVoltaire and the Search for AuthorityLocus of Poetic Inspiration or Site of Cultural Decay?Conclusion 2. The Romantic Aryans Romantic Myth TheoryFriedrich Schlegel and the Foundations of Romantic LinguisticsRomantic Mythographers and the UpnekhataRomantic Indology: The Case of Max MüllerConclusion 3. Nietzsche's Aryan Übermensch IntroductionReading Nietzsche Reading IndiaManu as a "Semitized" Aryan SourcebookThe Aryan as ÜbermenschChristianity, an Anti-Aryan Outcaste ReligionThe Jew and the AryanConclusion 4. Loose Can[n]ons Racial Theory: An OverviewGobineau and the Aryan AristocratHouston Stewart Chamberlain: Aryan PublicistAlfred Rosenberg and the Nordic AryanConclusion Part II. Who Speaks for the Subaltern? 5. Rammohan Roy Reading ReformThe Complexity of the Colonial SubjectScriptural Authority and the Hermeneutics of SatiMisreading Monotheism: Idolatry and Brahmin PerfidyRammohan Roy's Syncretism and Its Challenge to Postcolonial Theory 6. Text-based Identity: Dayanand Saraswatı's Reconstruction of the Aryan Self IntroductionDayanand's Canon and Hermeneutical Strategies for Reading the Aryan WorldAryan Masculinity and the Teleology of DecayConclusion 7. Aryan Identity and National Self-Esteem IntroductionJustice Ranade and Lokamanya TilakSwami VivekanandaConclusion 8. The Anti-Myth IntroductionThe Aryan and Its OtherMahatma PhuleDr. AmbedkarConclusion Afterword Notes Bibliography Index

"This is a marvelously learned and engaging book. It asks serious questions about the relations between language and race, and locates compelling answers in the texts that Indians and Europeans were reading simultaneously, often reinventing them for their respective purposes. The quality of the research and the vigor of the interpretations make this a valuable resource for cultural and intellectual historians, as well as for literary critics interested in emerging ideologies of 'right reading.'" — Gauri Viswanathan, author of Outside the Fold: Conversion, Modernity, and Belief