Postcoloniality and the artifice of history
Abstract
For generations now, philosophers and thinkers shaping nature of social science have produced theories embracing the entirety of humanity. The ‘fundamental jurisprudence’ was ‘rule of law’ that contrasted, in Dow’s narrative, with a past rule that was ‘arbitrary’ and ‘despotic.' In a further gloss Dow explained that ‘despotism’ did not refer to ‘government of mere caprice and whim, ' for he knew enough history to know that that was not true of India. A historical construction of temporality (medieval/ modern, separated by historical time), in other words, is precisely the axis along which colonial subject splits itself. Or to put it differently, this split is what is history; writing history is performing this split over and over again. The other strategy, equally significant, was to mobilize, on behalf of extended family, forms and figurations of collective memory that challenged, albeit ambiguously, the seemingly absolute separation of ‘sacred’ and ‘secular’ time on which very modern (‘European’) idea of history was/is based.