Undergraduate Exam
Apr. 16th, 2003 10:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldToday was my last undergraduate exam--History 312, "The Art of History." We had to do a comparative essay on the post-colonial and post-structural schools, relating them to the challenges to the entire concept of history as potentially objective. I took the argument that the post-colonial school accepted the principle of objectivity being theoretically possible with the canon only needing drastic renovation, but post-structural history was an ineradicable challenge. It took me two hours, but that was just me taking my time.
A side note on the whole concept of Orientalism after Edward Said: Granted that his basic premises might well be true in a limited sense, he doesn't seem to understand that the sorts of binary dichotomies between civilized and uncivilized that he's referring to are used everywhere. Even in Europe, there's traditional French opinion of Germany, German opinion of Poland, Polish opinion of Ukraine, et cetera; he doesn't seem aware of the Ottoman/Turkish attitude towards Persia/Iran and (after the Ottoman Empire's collapse) towards Arabs, or the Persian/Iranian attitude towards Afghanistan and Afghans; or, moving entirely out of Europe and the Orient, Thai attitudes towards their neighbours, mutual Chinese and Korean and Japanese dislikes; or, even in North America, the United States vis-รก-vis Mexico and the smaller states of the Caribbean and Central America. Argh.
A side note on the whole concept of Orientalism after Edward Said: Granted that his basic premises might well be true in a limited sense, he doesn't seem to understand that the sorts of binary dichotomies between civilized and uncivilized that he's referring to are used everywhere. Even in Europe, there's traditional French opinion of Germany, German opinion of Poland, Polish opinion of Ukraine, et cetera; he doesn't seem aware of the Ottoman/Turkish attitude towards Persia/Iran and (after the Ottoman Empire's collapse) towards Arabs, or the Persian/Iranian attitude towards Afghanistan and Afghans; or, moving entirely out of Europe and the Orient, Thai attitudes towards their neighbours, mutual Chinese and Korean and Japanese dislikes; or, even in North America, the United States vis-รก-vis Mexico and the smaller states of the Caribbean and Central America. Argh.
