White mythologies : writing history and the West
"We must, many now argue, 'get back to history'. But which one? History has always been a problematical concept in Western theory--particularly for Marxism. In the wake of postmodernism, its status has become even less certain. Is it possible to write history that avoids the trap of Eurocentrism? Robert Young's investigation of the 'history of History''--from Hegel and Marx to Althusser and Foucault--calls into question the Eurocentrism of traditional Marxist accounts of a single "World History", in which, as he shows, the "Third World" appears as an unassimilable excess, surplus to the narrative of the West. Young goes on to consider recent questionings of the limits of Western knowledge. He argues that the efforts of Edward Said, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Homi Bhabha to formulate non-historical ways of thinking and writing history are part of larger project of a decolonization of History and a deconstruction of "the West". White Mythologies is a trenchant intervention into debates around the relation of history to theory, of politics to knowledge. As such it will be welcomed by all those involved in the teachings and study of literary theory, cultural studies, history, an philosophy"--from back cover
Print Book, English, 1990
Routledge, London, 1990