Elements in Global Humanities – serie

Esoteric Orientalism studies Victorian esotericism and academic Orientalism as the nineteenth century's most significant comparative frameworks for understanding global religions, languages, and cultures. Occultist formations like the Theosophical Society (led by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky) and Orientalist disciplines like philology and comparative religion (as exemplified by Friedrich Max Müller) both believed in the essential kinship of East and West, routed through the Aryan family hypothesis-generating new visions of race and caste even while expanding the category of self. Still, theosophy and philology shared a contentious relationship. Blavatsky's writings anticipate postcolonial commentary in critiquing Orientalist scholarly presumption; her fantastical citational practices hold a mortifying mirror to academic Orientalism. Ultimately, this study traces how heterogeneous, riven, and powerfully consequential the larger discourse of Orientalism could be. Esoteric Orientalism combines broad historical narrative with literary close reading, recasting Theosophy as a speculative and imaginative construct through which to read Orientalist discourse more broadly.

Esoteric Orientalism studies Victorian esotericism and academic Orientalism as the nineteenth century's most significant comparative frameworks for understanding global religions, languages, and cultures. Occultist formations like the Theosophical Society (led by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky) and Orientalist disciplines like philology and comparative religion (as exemplified by Friedrich Max Müller) both believed in the essential kinship of East and West, routed through the Aryan family hypothesis-generating new visions of race and caste even while expanding the category of self. Still, theosophy and philology shared a contentious relationship. Blavatsky's writings anticipate postcolonial commentary in critiquing Orientalist scholarly presumption; her fantastical citational practices hold a mortifying mirror to academic Orientalism. Ultimately, this study traces how heterogeneous, riven, and powerfully consequential the larger discourse of Orientalism could be. Esoteric Orientalism combines broad historical narrative with literary close reading, recasting Theosophy as a speculative and imaginative construct through which to read Orientalist discourse more broadly.

This Element investigates how selected postcolonial African writers have adapted or rather reshaped historical sources for dramatic compositions. The writers and works the author focuses on are: Wole Soyinka (Death and the King's Horseman, 1975), Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o with Micere Githae Mugo (The Trial of Dedan Kimathi, 1976), Ebrahim Hussein (Kinjeketile, 1970), and Effiong Johnson (Not Without Bones, 2000.) Their reading of the plays emphasizes their status as postcolonial texts and not just works of African literature. In doing so, the Element is mindful of the fact that postcolonialism has inevitably involved the conceptualization of non-Western modes of thought as a means of challenging the West. The author's central argument is that the selected postcolonial African authors use artistic licence to rewrite colonial history from below, transforming historical trauma into counter‑narratives that restore agency, dignity, and futurity to the oppressed.