Imagining Afghanistan : the history and politics of imperial knowledge /
Over time and across different genres, Afghanistan has been presented to the world as potential ally, dangerous enemy, gendered space and mysterious locale. These powerful, if competing, visions seek to make sense of Afghanistan and to render it legible. In this innovate examination, Nivi Manchanda...
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
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Cambridge ; New York :
Cambridge University Press,
2020.
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| Summary: | Over time and across different genres, Afghanistan has been presented to the world as potential ally, dangerous enemy, gendered space and mysterious locale. These powerful, if competing, visions seek to make sense of Afghanistan and to render it legible. In this innovate examination, Nivi Manchanda uncovers and critically explores Anglophone practices of knowledge cultivation and representational strategies and argues that Afghanistan occupies a distinctive place in the imperial imagination, over-determined and under-theorized, owing largely to the particular history of imperial intervention in the region. Focusing on representations of gender, state and tribes, Manchanda rehistoricizes and demythologizes the study of Afghanistan through a sustained critique of colonial forms of knowing and demonstrates how the development of pervasive tropes in Western conceptions of Afghanistan have enabled Western intervention, invasion and bombing in the region from the nineteenth century to the present. |
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| Physical Description: | xi, 251 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (pages 230-248) and index. |
| ISBN: | 9781108491235 1108491235 9781108811767 1108811760 |