Subject Lessons

“Subject Lessons is a monograph which I am confident will remain a jewel among the other paperbacks which are rapidly becoming petrified wood on my bookshelf. In the academy, where one reads primarily for work-related purposes (as research, for teaching, etc.), it is always a treat to come across a book which is both enjoyable to read and informative. Seth’s prose is simultaneously descriptive and theoretical in such a way that I am able to get lost in the world of the text—in colonial India—but not forget that I am understanding the simultaneous historic and immediate rendering of ‘colonial India’ through western, ‘colonizing’ devices, namely, western philosophy and western education. Using hermeneutic historical analysis, Seth has successfully rendered a useful ‘fusion of historical horizons’ (Gadamer, 1976; Schrag, 2003) both within the world that the text seeks to report (i.e. between western and nationalist bodies in India) and between the world of the text and the reader.” - Craig Engstrom, Education Review

“Subject Lessons is an excellent example of [the] fundamental concerns of postcolonial studies. . . . [it] is an elegantly written, lucid book, with many theoretical and historical insights.” - Ritty Lukose, Comparative Education Review

“[T]hought-provoking . . . further enriches the growing wealth of material on women’s and gender history and highlights the significance of educational history within it.” - Ruth Watts, Gender & History

“In all, Seth has painted a colourful, engaging portrait of education in colonial India. Subject Lessons is a good read and posits significant questions that have been investigated by historians of South Asia. . . . [A]n important and insightful contribution to general intellectual history. . . .” - Hayden Bellenoit, Indian Economic and Social History Review

“The most important contribution of Subject Lessons is its demonstration of the disjuncture between modern knowledge and modernity or, in the case of India, how India can be modern but not characterized by western knowledge, and its ability to tease out the very precise mechanism – colonial education – through which all this occurred and failed to occur. . . . [V]ery evocative and moving.” - Nita Kumar, Social History

“Thought-provoking. . .” - Victoria J. Baker, Anthropology & Education Quarterly

“Very rarely has the English education of colonial India and its contiguities been closely examined and problematized. Seth’s enquiry into the dissemination of western education poses larger questions about what we accept as history and historiography, modern and modernity, and more importantly, remains conscious of the inescapability from western epistemologies in knowing the world. . . . [A]n erudite starting point for those like me to critically examine the learning and unlearning of the canon from within the canon itself.” - Divya Anand, Thesis Eleven

“Subject Lessons is a very important contribution to understanding of the coloniality of knowledge and of being. Imperial control is mainly control of subjectivity, and the control of subjectivity is largely based on education, on the formation of those to be subjected. Sanjay Seth’s study of education in colonial India has implications far beyond the subcontinent. Touching on epistemology, politics (governmentality), religion (Muslims in India), the idea of the nation, gender and sexuality, ethics and history, Seth describes how the logic of coloniality has been and continues to be globally enacted.” - Walter Mignolo, author of Idea of Latin America

“Subject Lessons revives a field that has remained dormant for years: the history of education in colonial India. This in itself is no small achievement. But Sanjay Seth does a lot more than that. Weaving together history and philosophical critiques of historicity and modernity, Seth has produced a book that is at once thoughtful and provocative. This outstanding book makes an original contribution to postcolonial criticism.” - Dipesh Chakrabarty, author of Habitations of Modernity: Essays in the Wake of Subaltern Studies

"The most triumphant success of Seth's book is the way it takes apart influential epistemological categories." - Saikat Majumdar, Los Angeles Review of Books