Join Books.org — it's free

Teaching - Social Science, Socio-Cultural Anthropology - General & Miscellaneous, Colonialism & Imperialism - General & Miscellaneous
The Postcolonial Aura by Arif Dirlik — book cover

The Postcolonial Aura

by Arif Dirlik
Available on Bookshop Write a review

Books.org participates in affiliate programs including Bookshop.org and the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. We may earn a commission from qualifying purchases made through links on this page, at no additional cost to you.

Log in to track your reading progress.

Overview

The essays in this volume range from questions of cultural self-representation in China to more general problems of reconceptualizing global relationships in response to contemporary changes. Although the new era of global capitalism calls for the remapping of global relations, such remapping must be informed both by a grasp of contemporary structures of economic, political, and cultural power and by memories of earlier radical visions of society. Without these two conditions, Arif Dirlik argues, the current preoccupation with Eurocentrism, ethnic diversity, and multiculturalism distract from issues of power that dominate global relations and that find expression in murderous ethnic conflicts.In lieu of multiculturalism, Dirlik offers “multi-historicalism,” which presupposes a historically grounded conception of cultural difference, seeks in different histories alternative visions of human society, and stresses divergent historical trajectories against a future colonized presently by an ideology of capital. Arguing that the operations of capital have brought the question of the local to the fore, he points to “indigenism” as a source of paradigms of social relations and relationships to nature, to challenge the voracious developmentalism that undermines local welfare globally.

About the Author, Arif Dirlik

Arif Dirlik is professor of history at Duke University.

Reviews

There are no reviews yet. Log in to write one.

Book Details

Published
September 15, 1998
Publisher
Boulder, Colo. : Westview Press, 1997.
Pages
272
Format
Paperback
ISBN
9780813332499

More by Arif Dirlik

Similar books