Orientalism
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The Myth of the “Average Pakistani”
X.T.M rebuts a commenter’s praise of a ‘liberal’ Shia couple from Baltistan as unlike the ‘average Pakistani’, calling the framing patronising and a colonial hangover, and arguing that Pakistanis prize…
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Review: Magic in Islam by Michael Mohammed Knight
In an old capsule review, the author calls Michael Knight’s Magic in Islam a hot mess worth reading: full of fascinating material on magic in Islamicate tradition, but wrapped in…
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What’s in a name? That which we call a Swastika, isn’t exactly a symbol of hate
Recalling drawing auspicious symbols on exam papers in India and learning of Germany’s ban on the swastika, the author argues it is not simply a symbol of hate and traces…
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Pass the samosa, spare the postcolonialism
Razib Khan argues that Edward Said’s Orientalism at least made an intelligible argument, whereas mass-level postcolonialism is inchoate and its academic form unintelligible, using a Juggernaut piece on cultural appropriation…
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How to understand a people
Points to a long post on his other weblog arguing that a group should not be reduced to an agent in another civilisation’s history, and says this bears on views…
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Review: The Buddha and the Sahibs and Ashoka—The Search for India’s Lost Emperor
Sunil Koswatta reviews Charles Allen’s two books on how British Orientalists rediscovered Ashoka and the Buddha. It praises Allen’s storytelling and the honest scholars among the sahibs, and dwells on…
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This Zach is an ass
The author objects to a tweet by Zach Goldberg that portrays his Indian girlfriend as confused by diversity training and wanting only Bollywood films, arguing that it plays on Orientalist…
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Review: From the Ruins of Empire; The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia
A long rolling review, written while reading Pankaj Mishra’s From the Ruins of Empire and reposted after editing, argues the book is not really about the intellectuals who remade Asia,…
