Kooperativer Bibliotheksverbund

UID:

Format: 1 online resource (266 pages)

Edition: 1st ed.

ISBN: 1-5036-0404-7

Content: For more than three decades, preeminent scholars in comparative literature and postcolonial studies have called for a return to philology as the indispensable basis of critical method in the humanities. Against such calls, this book argues that the privilege philology has always enjoyed within the modern humanities silently reinforces a colonial hierarchy. In fact, each of philology's foundational innovations originally served British rule in India. Tracing an unacknowledged history that extends from British Orientalist Sir William Jones to Palestinian American intellectual Edward Said and beyond, Archaeology of Babel excavates the epistemic transformation that was engendered on a global scale by the colonial reconstruction of native languages, literatures, and law. In the process, it reveals the extent to which even postcolonial studies and European philosophy—not to mention discourses as disparate as Islamic fundamentalism, Hindu nationalism, and global environmentalism—are the progeny of colonial rule. Going further, it unearths the alternate concepts of language and literature that were lost along the way and issues its own call for humanists to reckon with the politics of the philological practices to which they now return.

Note: Front matter -- , CONTENTS -- , ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- , PROLOGUE -- , 1. The Return to Philology, the End of Weltliteratur -- , 2. The Ruins of Babel, the Rise of Philology -- , 3. Aryanism, Ursprache, “Literature” -- , 4. Colonialism and Comparatism -- , 5. Chapters in the History of the Philological Revolution -- , 1. The Colonial Grammar of “Literature” -- , 2. From the Persian Imperium to the British Empire -- , 3. The Passions of Literature: Hafiz, 1771 A.D.-- , 4. Nietzsche and “World Literature” -- , 5. Sovereign Law and Sacred Life: Hafiz, 1390 A.D. -- , 1. The Colonial Rule of Law -- , 2. The Imperial Institution of Shari‘a -- , 3. Shari‘a from Colonialism to Islamism -- , 4. Shari‘a from the Qur’ān to Colonialism -- , 5. State Models and War Machines I: The Mu‘allaqāt, 1782 A.D -- , 6. State Models and War Machines II: The Mu‘allaqāt, 550 A.D-- , 1. From the Indo-European Hypothesis to Hindu Nationalism: The Laws of Manu, 1794 A.D -- , 2. The Idea of Indo-European Civilization: Śakuntalā, 1789 A.D-- , 3. The Dharma and Sacrificial Violence, 100 A.D to 1400 B.C. -- , 4. The Sovereign and the Earth: Śakuntalā, 415 A.D to 400 B.C. -- , 1. The Colonial Matrix of Emergency -- , 2. Philology—Colonial Law—Emergency -- , 3. The Real State of Emergency, the Tradition of the Oppressed, the Nameless -- , NOTES -- , BIBLIOGRAPHY -- , INDEX , Issued also in print. , In English.

Additional Edition: ISBN 0-8047-8529-5

Language: English

DOI: 10.1515/9781503604049