Esoteric Orientalism

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.

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