Colonial Desire

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.