Richard King's Orentalism and Religion is an impressive and truly cross-disciplinary study that tackles head
on some of the field's most deeply ingrained yet troublesome presumptions. This book promises to set the terms
for future debates on the status, methods and theories of religion.
--Russell McCutcheon, Southwest Missouri State University
An insightful and provocative contribution to recent series of studies that can be best characterized as 'colonial
discourse analysis'.
--Gerald Larson, Indiana University
This is an important book. The main theme, the 'othering' of the East, is highly significant and original, painstakingly
documented, and with major implications for western scholarship.
--Grace Jantzen, University of Manchester
Routledge Publishing Web Site, March, 2002
Summary
Orientalism and Religion offers us a timely discussion of the implications of contemporary post-colonial theory
for the study of religion. Drawing on a variety of post-structuralist and post-colonial thinkers, including Foucault,
Gadamer, Said, and Spivak, Richard King examines the way in which notions such as mysticism, religion, Hinduism
and Buddhism are taken for granted, and shows us how religion needs to be redescribed along the lines of cultural
studies.
Table of Contents
Introduction:Changing the Subject
1. The Power of Definitions:A Genealogy of the "Mystical"
2. Disciplining Religion
3. Sacred Texts, Hermeneutics and World Religions
4. Orientalism and Indian Religions
5. The Modern Myth of "Hinduism"
6. "Mystic Hinduism":Vedanta and the Politics of Representation
7. Orientalism and the Discovery of "Buddhism"
8. The Politics of Privatization:Indian Religion and the Study of Mysticism
9. Beyond Orientalism? Religion and Comparativism in a Post-Colonial Era
