Rescuing history from the nation

Abstract

I have been asked to touch on the history that Prasenjit Duara rescues in Rescuing History, rather than on the theoretical apparatus employed in his attempt. The two are not easily separated in any case, but here the customary distinctions among empirically verifiable evidence, explanatory strategies, and historical method are especially tenuous. Duara goes well beyond the relativist claim that historical “facts” are selective and partial records of events, implicated in historians' choices of competing explanations, to mount the broader claim that competing explanations(“narratives”) are the stuff of history. In view of the fusion of theory and practice in Duara's study of narratives, I should like to consider the significance of Duara's method for the study of China's history and then explore in some detail one of the claims put forward in his comparison of the distinctive narratives of Chinese and Indian history: specifically, the relative importance of colonial representations of the people of China and India for the emergence of the modern national subject.

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