The Rhetoric of Otherness in the Discourse of Economics A Postcolonial critique

This paper is a critical examination of some current texts in the discourse of global economics using contributions from postcolonial theory. Through an application of the concepts of ‘knowing’ and ‘representation’, it looks at the persistence of colonialist discourse in global economics and the wider implications of this for the disciplines of management and economics. With the increasing pace of globalization, there has been an increased momentum in ‘knowing’ and ‘representing’ hitherto unavailable markets. To the investment, business and management communities, one of the easier ways to obtain information is through the genre of business journalism. This genre is also found on reading lists on management and economics courses around the world. Some texts from this genre relating to the Indian economy have been chosen for analysis here. They were published in several issues of ‘The Economist’ and ‘Newsweek’ between the years 1991and 1997. Concepts of mimicry, ambivalence and the stereotype popularised by Bhabha have been used in the analysis of the representations of Indian democracy. Similarly, the use of metaphors as a discursive strategy to represent the Indian economy have also been examined. The paper thus looks at how the articulation of difference in political and economic terms constructs an Otherness through which a global geo-political and economic hierarchy is sustained. Finally, the difficulties of doing a critical reading of such neo-liberal texts within management classrooms are discussed along with a brief examination of the implications that such a reading may have on management and postcolonial studies. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------[Certain texts are given] the authority of academics, institutions, and governments... Most important, such texts can create not only knowledge but also the very reality they appear to describe. In time such knowledge and reality produce a tradition, or what Michel Foucault calls a discourse, whose material presence or weight, not the originality of a given author, is really responsible for the texts produced out of it. (Said 1978: 94) Introduction This paper is a critical examination of some current texts within the discourse of global economics using contributions from postcolonial theory. Through an application of the concepts of ‘knowing’ and ‘representation’, I have looked at the persistence of colonialist thought in global economics and the wider implications this has for the disciplines of management and economics. Knowing and representation are themes that have been discussed widely in