Goldsmiths - University of London

Professor Sanjay Seth BA PhD

I have held teaching or research positions at the University of Sydney, La Trobe University (Melbourne), and Tokyo University before joining Goldsmiths in 2007, where I am Director of the Centre for Postcolonial Studies.

Teaching

I currently teach an MA subject, ‘Global Political Cultures, two 3rd year undergraduate subjects- ‘Liberalism and its Critics’ and ‘Colonialism and non-Western Political Thought’ and I co-teach a 1st year subject, Politics of Other Cultures.

Areas of supervision

Social and political theory, Indian history and politics, non-Western thought and politics, Marxism and liberalism, postcolonial theory.

Professional activities

Editorial Positions

Founding Co-Editor, Postcolonial Studies (Routledge, 1998- present)

Co-editor, Routledge book series on ‘Postcolonial Politics’

Editorial Board Member, IPS: International Political Sociology (Blackwells)

Editorial Board Member, Asian Studies Review (Routledge)

Editorial Board Member, South Asian History and Culture (Routledge)

Editorial Board Member, History Compass (Wiley-Blackwell) 

Editorial Board Member, darkmatter

Keynote lectures

2011 "Western Knowledge and non-Western Objects", "Knowledge Politics and Intercultural Dynamics” seminar, CIDOB, Barcelona.

2011 “Memory and History”, International Commission of Historiography and Theory of History conference, Sofia (Bulgaria).

2011 “Revolution and History”, “Subaltern Studies: Historical World-Making Thirty Years On” conference, Australian National University, Canberra.

2011 “The Politics of Knowledge”, “Politics of Knowledge” conference, University of Brasilia, Brasilia.

2011 “Modernity and the Human Sciences”, lecture given at the University of Rio de Janeiro and the University of Buenos Aires.

2011 “Postcolonial Theory and International Relations”, “40 Years of Millennium” Symposium, LSE, London.

2010 “Changing the Subject: Western Knowledge and the Question of Difference”, International Sociology of Education Conference, London.

2010 “Once I was blind but now I can see: Teleology and the Human Sciences”, “Teleology and History workshop”, Rome.

2010 "New Knowledges and Changing Subjects: Western Education in Colonial India", “Education and Empire” conference, Galway (Ireland).

2010 “Critique of Impure (Modern, Western) Reason”, “After Europe: Postcolonial Knowledge in the Age of Globalization”, University of Chicago.

2010 “An Encounter with Charles Taylor: Roundtable”, Centre for the Study of Democracy, Westminster University.

2009 “Postcolonial Theory and the Critique of Modern, Western Knowledge”, “Fears, Facts and Fascination”, Autumn Academy of Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut (Essen) and Stiftung fur Kulturwissenschaften. Ruhr-University Bochum.

2009 “A Critique of Asian Studies”, Griffith University (Australia).

2009 “The limits of modern, western knowledge and the discourse of development”, “Reframing Development: Post-Development, Globalizaton and the Human Condition” Global Collaboration Center, Osaka University.

2008 “Humanism and the Colonial Encounter”, Goethe-Institut and the Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut (Essen), Kolkota.

2008 “Historiography After Society”, International Commission of Historiography and Theory of History, University of Athens.

2008 “Postcolonial Theory: Current Trends””, Taiwan National Science Council, National Chung Hsing University.

2008 “Globalization as the End of Difference? A Postcolonial Dissent”, Global Collaboration Center, Osaka University.

Research interests

I have published in the fields of modern Indian history, political and social theory, postcolonial theory and international relations. I am particularly interested in how modern European ideologies, and modern Western knowledge more generally, ‘travelled’ to the non-Western world- and what effects this had both on the non-Western world, and on modern, Western knowledge. Relatedly, my recent and current work is focused on whether the presumptions that inform our modern knowledge are ‘universal’, meaning adequate to all times and places- as is usually supposed- or whether they are in fact parochial, presumptions that are specifically modern and Western but that illegitimately pass themselves off as universal. I usually use my Indian archive to raise and pursue these broad social, cultural and epistemological questions.

Selected publications

Subject Lessons: The Western Education of Colonial India, Duke University Press, 2007 and Oxford University Press, India, 2008.

Marxist Theory and Nationalist Politics: The Case of Colonial India, New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1995.

“Rewriting Histories of Nationalism: The Politics of ‘Moderate Nationalism’ in Colonial India, 1870-1905”, American Historical Review, 104:1, February 1999, pp. 95-116 (reprinted in abridged form in S. Bandyopadhyay (ed), Nationalist Movement in India: A Reader, Oxford University Press, 2009)

“Changing the Subject: Western Knowledge and the Question of Difference”, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 49:2 (2007), pp. 666-668.

Reason or Reasoning? Clio or Siva?”, Social Text, No. 78 (2004), pp. 85-101.

“Crítica de la razón (moderna, Occidental) impure”, Tabula Rasa, No. 14 (2011), 31-54.

“Postcolonial Theory and the Critique of International Relations”, Millennium, 40:1 (September 2011), 167-83.

“Which Past? Whose Transcendental Presupposition?”, Postcolonial Studies, 11:2 (June 2008), pp. 215-226 (special issue on “Historiography and non-Western Pasts” edited by Seth)

“Interpreting Revolutionary Excess: The Naxalite Movement in India, 1967-71”, in Tani Barlow (ed), New Asian Marxisms, Duke University Press, 2002, pp. 333-357. (reprint of essay which first appeared in Positions).

“Back to the Future?”, Third World Quarterly, 2002 (Feature Review essay), 23:3 (2002), pp. 565-575 (abridged version reprinted in G. Balakrishnan (ed), Debating Empire, London and New York: Verso, 2003, pp. 43-51).


“A Critique of Disciplinary Reason: The Limits of Political Theory”, Alternatives, No. 26 (2001), pp. 73-92.

“Liberalism and the Politics of (Multi)Culture: or, Plurality is not Difference”, Postcolonial Studies, Vol. 4, No. 1 (2001), pp. 65-77.

“A Postcolonial World?”, in Greg Fry and J. O’Hagan (eds), Contending Images of World Politics, Macmillan 2000, pp. 214-26.