"Westernization and Asian Identity"

Speaker:

Professor Irfan Habib(Aligarh Muslim University, India)

Date&Time:

16:00-18:00, December 12 (Monday), 2005

Venue:

Lecture Room1 (AA401), 4th floor, Faculty of Engineering Bldg. No.4, Kyoto University

I hope to argue, partly in the framework of Marx’s thesis of the unintended regenerative consequences of colonialism, and partly through a critique of Edward Said’s Orientalism, that modern ideas from the West fuelled the contours of nationalisms, which ultimately saw Asian unity as an important element of solidarity in anti-colonial resistance. In a rather narrative and conventional fashion, this issue has already been handled by free India’s early diplomat and historian K.M. Panikkar in his Asia and Western Dominance.