Europe's Indians

Producing Racial Difference, 1500–1900

Nonfiction, Religion & Spirituality, Philosophy, Epistemology, Modern, Social & Cultural Studies, Political Science, Politics, History & Theory
Cover of the book Europe's Indians by Vanita Seth, Julia Adams, George Steinmetz, Duke University Press
View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart
Author: Vanita Seth, Julia Adams, George Steinmetz ISBN: 9780822392941
Publisher: Duke University Press Publication: August 3, 2010
Imprint: Duke University Press Books Language: English
Author: Vanita Seth, Julia Adams, George Steinmetz
ISBN: 9780822392941
Publisher: Duke University Press
Publication: August 3, 2010
Imprint: Duke University Press Books
Language: English

Europe’s Indians forces a rethinking of key assumptions regarding difference—particularly racial difference—and its centrality to contemporary social and political theory. Tracing shifts in European representations of two different colonial spaces, the New World and India, from the late fifteenth century through the late nineteenth, Vanita Seth demonstrates that the classification of humans into racial categories or binaries of self–other is a product of modernity. Part historical, part philosophical, and part a history of science, her account exposes the epistemic conditions that enabled the thinking of difference at distinct historical junctures. Seth’s examination of Renaissance, Classical Age, and nineteenth-century representations of difference reveals radically diverging forms of knowing, reasoning, organizing thought, and authorizing truth. It encompasses stories of monsters, new worlds, and ancient lands; the theories of individual agency expounded by Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau; and the physiological sciences of the nineteenth century. European knowledge, Seth argues, does not reflect a singular history of Reason, but rather multiple traditions of reasoning, of historically bounded and contingent forms of knowledge. Europe’s Indians shows that a history of colonialism and racism must also be an investigation into the historical production of subjectivity, agency, epistemology, and the body.

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

Europe’s Indians forces a rethinking of key assumptions regarding difference—particularly racial difference—and its centrality to contemporary social and political theory. Tracing shifts in European representations of two different colonial spaces, the New World and India, from the late fifteenth century through the late nineteenth, Vanita Seth demonstrates that the classification of humans into racial categories or binaries of self–other is a product of modernity. Part historical, part philosophical, and part a history of science, her account exposes the epistemic conditions that enabled the thinking of difference at distinct historical junctures. Seth’s examination of Renaissance, Classical Age, and nineteenth-century representations of difference reveals radically diverging forms of knowing, reasoning, organizing thought, and authorizing truth. It encompasses stories of monsters, new worlds, and ancient lands; the theories of individual agency expounded by Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau; and the physiological sciences of the nineteenth century. European knowledge, Seth argues, does not reflect a singular history of Reason, but rather multiple traditions of reasoning, of historically bounded and contingent forms of knowledge. Europe’s Indians shows that a history of colonialism and racism must also be an investigation into the historical production of subjectivity, agency, epistemology, and the body.

More books from Duke University Press

Cover of the book The Heavens on Earth by Vanita Seth, Julia Adams, George Steinmetz
Cover of the book People of the Volcano by Vanita Seth, Julia Adams, George Steinmetz
Cover of the book Singing the Classical, Voicing the Modern by Vanita Seth, Julia Adams, George Steinmetz
Cover of the book Negotiating National Identity by Vanita Seth, Julia Adams, George Steinmetz
Cover of the book Our America by Vanita Seth, Julia Adams, George Steinmetz
Cover of the book Exile and Pride by Vanita Seth, Julia Adams, George Steinmetz
Cover of the book High Stakes by Vanita Seth, Julia Adams, George Steinmetz
Cover of the book Publishing the Family by Vanita Seth, Julia Adams, George Steinmetz
Cover of the book Poetics of the Flesh by Vanita Seth, Julia Adams, George Steinmetz
Cover of the book The Crux by Vanita Seth, Julia Adams, George Steinmetz
Cover of the book Called by Stories by Vanita Seth, Julia Adams, George Steinmetz
Cover of the book Yugoslav-American Economic Relations Since World War II by Vanita Seth, Julia Adams, George Steinmetz
Cover of the book Religion and Poverty by Vanita Seth, Julia Adams, George Steinmetz
Cover of the book Panic Diaries by Vanita Seth, Julia Adams, George Steinmetz
Cover of the book Natural and Moral History of the Indies by Vanita Seth, Julia Adams, George Steinmetz
We use our own "cookies" and third party cookies to improve services and to see statistical information. By using this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy