The Rani of Sirmur: An Essay in Reading the Archives

Abstract

Two years ago, when a conference with title and Its Others was proposed by Sociology of Literature Group at Essex, I made some pious remarks about an alternative title, namely, as an Other. It has since then seemed to me that proposed revision was ill-considered in at least two ways. First, it ignored fact that history and theory that such a conference would want to expose are precisely those of how Europe had consolidated itself as sovereign subject by defining its colonies as Others, even as it constituted them, for purposes of administration and expansion of markets, into programmed near-images of that very sovereign self. Second, proposed revision nostalgically assumed that a critique of imperialism would restore a sovereignty for lost self of colonies so that Europe could, once and for all, be put in place of other that it always was. It now seems to me that it is this kind of revisionary impulse that is allowing emergence of as a convenient signifier. If instead we concentrated on documenting and theorizing itinerary of consolidation of Europe as sovereign subject, indeed sovereign and subject, then we would produce an alternative historical narrative of worlding of what is today called the Third World. To think of Third World as distant cultures, exploited but with rich intact heritages waiting to be recovered, interpreted, and curricularized in English translation helps emergence of the Third as a signifier that allows us to forget that worlding, even as it expands empire of discipline.'