Culture and Imperialism

Said reminds readers what the main focus of his scholarly project is: “studying the relationship between the ‘West’ and its dominated cultural ‘others’ is not just a way of understanding an unequal relationship between unequal interlocutors, but also a point of entry into studying the formation and meaning of Western cultural practices themselves” (191). He goes on to argue how this functions in the post-imperial moment—which is not properly post-imperial at all, as the world still confronts the continuing fallout of the imperial age. The resistance to imperialism was always present within it, and now that resistance has led to a re-ordering of the world. These forces were present within the structures of imperialism long before the resistance created new states independent of their colonial interlopers.

Still, Said claims, even within that resistance the rhetoric of imperialism lingers: “a standard imperialism misrepresentation has it that exclusively Western ideas of freedom led the fight against colonial rule” (199). Thus, with ascendant irony, “the fight against imperialism [is] one of imperialism’s major triumphs” (199). Said employs E.M. Forster’s novel, A Passage to India, to illuminate some of these tensions and misunderstandings. While Forster’s characters can plainly see the rising Indian nationalist sentiment, the idea that the empire might end is still obscured by their own certainty in the uniquely British ability to rule this incomprehensible continent—that theme of India’s unknowability crops up again.