Imperial Messages: Orientalism as Self-Critique in the Habsburg Fin de Siecle

Robert Lemon (Customer)

Imperial Messages: Orientalism as Self-Critique in the Habsburg Fin de Siecle
Format
Hardback
Publisher
Boydell & Brewer Ltd
Country
United States
Published
1 June 2011
Pages
184
ISBN
9781571135001

Imperial Messages: Orientalism as Self-Critique in the Habsburg Fin de Siecle

Robert Lemon (Customer)

In recent years a debate has arisen on the applicability of postcolonial theory to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Some have argued that Austria-Hungary’s lack of overseas territories renders the concepts of colonialism and postcolonialism irrelevant, while others have cited the quasi-colonial attitudes of the Viennese elite towards the various subject peoples of the empire as a point of comparison. Imperial Messages applies postcolonial theory to works of orientalist fiction by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Robert Musil, and Franz Kafka, all subjects of the empire, challenging Edward Said’s notion that orientalism invariably acts in the ideological service of European colonialism.It argues that these Habsburg authors employ oriental motifs not to promulgate Western hegemony, but to engage in self-reflection and self-critique, including critique of the foundational concepts of orientalist discourse itself.By providing detailed textual analyses of canonical works of Austrian Modernism, including Hofmannsthal’s Tale of the 672nd Night, Musil’s Young Toerless, and Kafka’s In the Penal Colony, the book not only offers new postcolonial readings of these Austrian works, but also shows how they question the conventional postcolonial and post-Saidian view of orientalism as a purely hegemonic discourse.

Robert Lemon is Associate Professor of German at the University of Oklahoma.

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