초록 열기/닫기 버튼
This essay examines Edward Said’s Culture and Imperialism focusing on the concepts of ‘culture,’ ‘empire,’ and ‘nation’. The approach is critical, theoretical, and historical rather than explicatory. Consequently, the range of the essay is not limited to Said’s own explanation and argument about Western imperialism and its culture presented in the book. In doing this, this essay finally purposes to be a discursive resistance to the current global empire, the United States, via a critical reading of Said’s work. Said’s notion of culture is set upon to disclose the function of culture as an apparatus of ideological consent of the dominated to the dominant. When applied to imperial practice, Western culture functions to subject the colonized to the colonizer. Said’s geographical approach to imperialism complements the historical understanding of imperialism. Imperialism is not only the practice of Western-centered historicism but also the spatially mutual interaction between the West and the rest of the world. Along with European imperialism, Said poses the current global empire of the United States as his main target of criticism. Said’s problem is that he takes the United States as a nation-state. When examined, the United States is not a nation-state, but today’s empire. The empire in the appearance of the nation-state United States does not work for the interest of the American nation, that is, the American people. The empire is the transnational and postnational political and economic institution that works for the interest of global capital. In order to resist the current global empire, this essay suggests that the building or restoration of nation-states with its basic principle of people’s sovereignty is in need.
키워드열기/닫기 버튼
Edward Said, Raymond Williams, Antonio Gramsci, Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri, Culture and Imperialism, culture, empire, imperialism,nationalism, colonialism, nation, nation-state, capital
