Abstract
The body has been an important analytical tool in recent years in studies of
South Asian history and culture. Two main sources lay behind this focus. On
the one hand the work of Edward Said emphasized the place of cultural
constructions of the body in the manufacture of the ideology of Western
superiority and non-Western inferiority that was so important in legitimating
the colonialism of Europe, and indeed has continued to feature in the collective
denigration of imagined groups such as Arabs and Muslims. By representing
in literature, art, journalism, and so on the physical manifestation of individuals
deemed to belong to such groups as somehow 'different', 'corrupted' and
'unpredictable' when compared with the 'normal' bodies of those from the
West, the control of those featured as 'normal' over those seen as 'different' was
justified and made to seem part of a natural order (Said 1986, 1989).
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Sport and postcolonialism |
| Pages | 107-123 |
| Number of pages | 16 |
| Publication status | Published - 2003 |
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Keywords
- human body
- south asian history
- colonialism
- ideology
Cite this
Mills, J., Dimeo, P., Bale, J. (Ed.), & Cronin, M. (Ed.) (2003). When gold is fired it shines: sport, the imagination and the body in colonial and post-colonial India. In Sport and postcolonialism (pp. 107-123)