Sayaka's review of The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories
by Partha Chatterjee
A great combination of theoretical reflection and narrative history. I don't know how he does that. It's amazing how easy the reading of this book is! Coming from the Korean historiography, I knew there were a lot of similarities (and the Korean imitation of subaltern studies) in colonial history writing, but it was much more significantly so than I expected.
I am super excited about his argument that colonialism is the heart of the modern state project. But I am left with the question of, so then can we abandon the whole idea of coloniality? (which I cannot really discuss because of my positionality.) I was not convinced by his treatment of the European experience where nationalism was not as fragmented; the spiritual + material were not divided (did I misread it?). Although he regards the "module" of nationalism as limited to the political domain, and counterpoises his point that nationalism was already developing in the spiritual domain, it seems to me that suc...more
I am super excited about his argument that colonialism is the heart of the modern state project. But I am left with the question of, so then can we abandon the whole idea of coloniality? (which I cannot really discuss because of my positionality.) I was not convinced by his treatment of the European experience where nationalism was not as fragmented; the spiritual + material were not divided (did I misread it?). Although he regards the "module" of nationalism as limited to the political domain, and counterpoises his point that nationalism was already developing in the spiritual domain, it seems to me that suc...more
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