In 1983, historian Benedict Anderson published Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism and argued that print capitalism (i.e. print culture) made it possible for people to control the language of a community. Print culture served as a method of control to dominate the language people used to define the world around them because people created new frames of dialogue. The concept shook the historical community and scholars started to debate the issue in numerous books and articles. Historian Partha Chatterjee, a professor of Anthropology and Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies at Columbia University, became very critical of Anderson’s work and wrote The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial
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He argues that the “claims of Western civilization were the most powerful in the material sphere. Science, technology, rational forms of economic organization, modern methods of statecraft—these had given the European countries the strength to subject the non-European people and to impose their dominance over the whole world.” Thus, the colonized needed to overcome this domination and learn the superior techniques of organizing material life and incorporate them into their own lives. However, Chatterjee also notes the dichotomy of the home versus the world, which is actually the inner spiritual world verses the material world. The inner spiritual world is where the colonized can act as their true selves because they functioned outside of the eyes of the colonizer. However, the man, a symbol of patriarchy, controlled;’ the domain of the home. In turn, the colonizing power also utilized the material sphere to subjugate the colonized. This home/world dichotomy also defines specific gender roles, which the West defined because it goes against traditional Bengali gender …show more content…
Traditionally, Bengali women were “once hardworking and strong,” but they were “now lazy and fond of luxury unmindful of housework, and prone to all sorts of illnesses.” Western material ideals redefined notions of gender for Bengali women and created a discourse that included race, class, and gender. He analyzes the lives of middle class women that included Kailasbasini Debi and Prasannamayi Debi. These two women defined the “new women” despite their middle class background and education status. Many Bengali women received a traditional education in their own language, while learning to read, write, and perform traditional household tasks. Kailasbasini Debi life demonstrates how the “new woman” needed to cling to her native religion to defend herself from her liberal husband, who represented the British mindset. Prasannamayi’s story is quite unique because she married a man at the age of ten and returned home because her mentally handicap husband tortured her; her father decided to end her marriage, but she rejected the notion of the marriage and choose to be an intellectual woman. Yet, in Chatterjee’s analysis of this figure, the reader should be aware of a major issue with her life. The woman embraced a traditional role that was appropriate to her caste, but she operated within a system
He argues that the “claims of Western civilization were the most powerful in the material sphere. Science, technology, rational forms of economic organization, modern methods of statecraft—these had given the European countries the strength to subject the non-European people and to impose their dominance over the whole world.” Thus, the colonized needed to overcome this domination and learn the superior techniques of organizing material life and incorporate them into their own lives. However, Chatterjee also notes the dichotomy of the home versus the world, which is actually the inner spiritual world verses the material world. The inner spiritual world is where the colonized can act as their true selves because they functioned outside of the eyes of the colonizer. However, the man, a symbol of patriarchy, controlled;’ the domain of the home. In turn, the colonizing power also utilized the material sphere to subjugate the colonized. This home/world dichotomy also defines specific gender roles, which the West defined because it goes against traditional Bengali gender …show more content…
Traditionally, Bengali women were “once hardworking and strong,” but they were “now lazy and fond of luxury unmindful of housework, and prone to all sorts of illnesses.” Western material ideals redefined notions of gender for Bengali women and created a discourse that included race, class, and gender. He analyzes the lives of middle class women that included Kailasbasini Debi and Prasannamayi Debi. These two women defined the “new women” despite their middle class background and education status. Many Bengali women received a traditional education in their own language, while learning to read, write, and perform traditional household tasks. Kailasbasini Debi life demonstrates how the “new woman” needed to cling to her native religion to defend herself from her liberal husband, who represented the British mindset. Prasannamayi’s story is quite unique because she married a man at the age of ten and returned home because her mentally handicap husband tortured her; her father decided to end her marriage, but she rejected the notion of the marriage and choose to be an intellectual woman. Yet, in Chatterjee’s analysis of this figure, the reader should be aware of a major issue with her life. The woman embraced a traditional role that was appropriate to her caste, but she operated within a system