Max müller and textual management: A postcolonial perspective

Abstract

First, a brief word about postcolonialism.1 Postcolonialism is one of the latest theoretical categories to enter academic discourse. Each discipline has come up with its own definition of postcolonialism and has appropriated it to suit its own academic needs. Postcolonial theory has been used in many different ways ' as a methodological approach, as a resistant or oppositional strategy, or as a discursive category. As with any critical category, postcolonialism is not without limitations, but nevertheless it is a highly serviceable category. The aim of postcolonial criticism is to interrogate textual, historical, ethnographic, visual and other representations of societies which were badly affected by the historical reality of colonial presence and domination. It is about how colonizers constructed images of the colonized, as well as how the colonized themselves made use of these images as a counter-tool to combat negative portrayals and to construct a new identity. Postcolonial theory is useful in that it reveals the link between knowledge and power and between representation and mediation, and highlights homogenizing, essentializing and universalising tendencies in varied discourses, reading and interpretative strategies. I will mainly use postcolonialism as a hermeneutical tool to interrogate Max Müller's construction of Hinduism. The chapter2 will look at Müller's treatment of the Veda, under the following three theoretical categories: colonial patronage, trope of the child and classification.