Colonial Desire

Colonial Desire by ROBERT J.C. YOUNG. paperback edition. ISBN: 9780415053747.

The language of contemporary cultural theory shows remarkable similarities with the patterns of thought which characterised Victorian racial theory. Far from being marked by a separation from the racialised thinking of the past, Colonial Desire shows we are operating in complicity with historical ways of viewing the other, both sexually and racially. Colonial Desire is a controversial and bracing study of the history of Englishness and culture. Robert Young argues that the theories advanced today about post-colonialism and ethnicity are disturbingly close to the colonial discourse of the nineteenth century. Englishness, Young argues, has been less fixed and stable than uncertain, fissured with difference and a desire for otherness.