220002 Empires of Knowledge – Colonial Governmentality and Information-Gathering in Asia (S) (SoSe 2010)

It is well-known that colonial empires had particular interest in accumulating information about the colonized for establishing effectual governance in conquered territories. This colonial intervention in the every-day life of the conquered invariably led to the objectification of ´knowledge´ about the colonized, which invariably led to the reification of colonized ´cultures´ as alter-egos of the colonial ones. Such colonial cultural interventions played a vital role in ´constructing´ local cultures and traditions, which, in turn, had a profound impact on the socio-political life of the colonial/postcolonial societies. In recent decades, this cultural implication of colonial hegemony in colonial and postcolonial societies received particular attention from scholars who were keen on ´deconstrucing´ colonially-constructed knowledge about the colonized as a part of the ongoing cultural de-colonization process in postcolonial societies. This course intends to analyse the various aspects of the cultural encounter between colonial hegemonic powers and colonized societies in Asia in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.