Re-Reading the Himalayas: Orientalism, Postcoloniality, and Structuralist Discourse in English Representations of Nepal

Author

Om Prakash Singh

Abstract

 This article examines the ways in which English-language literary and travel texts construct Nepal and the Himalayas through enduring Orientalist imaginaries, including representations of the region as exotic, spiritual, timeless, pristine, and culturally authentic. Drawing on Edward Said's theory of Orientalism, postcolonial perspectives associated with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Homi K. Bhabha, Mary Louise Pratt's theorization of travel writing and the contact zone, and structuralist and post-structuralist approaches to narrative and discourse, the article analyses selected English-language travel memoirs and travel narratives concerned with Nepal and the wider Himalayan region. Particular attention is given to Peter Matthiessen's The Snow Leopard (1978), Jamaica Kincaid's Among Flowers: A Walk in the Himalaya (2005), and Colin Thubron's To a Mountain in Tibet (2011), supplemented by relevant South Asian and Nepali critical perspectives. The study investigates how binary oppositions, narrative structures, focalization, descriptive patterns, and linguistic choices contribute to the construction of Nepal as an object of Western observation and self-discovery. It argues that Orientalist discourse can persist even when writers explicitly question imperialism or acknowledge their own positionality. At the same time, the study complicates a simple colonizer/colonized model by considering Nepal's distinctive historical position: formally independent but deeply entangled with British imperial power, military recruitment, geopolitical interests, tourism, and development regimes. The article proposes that Nepal provides a productive site for rethinking postcoloniality beyond formal colonial occupation. By bringing Orientalist, postcolonial, and structuralist approaches into dialogue, the study develops a framework for examining the continuing discursive production of the Himalayas in Anglophone literary and cultural representations.

Keywords

Orientalism; Postcolonialism; Structuralism; Post-structuralism; Nepal; Himalayas; Travel Writing; Representation; Othering; Discourse

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References

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Upadhyay, Toya Nath. “Quest for Idyllic Pleasure in Kincaid's Among Flowers: A Walk in the Himalaya.” Humanities and Social Sciences Journal, vol. 13, no. 1, 2021, pp. 121–131.

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