Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France and the Subject of Eurocentrism (Critical Essay‪)‬

In Strange Country Seamus Deane argues convincingly that the Irish writer Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) is a 'foundational text for a particular description of a contrast and a contest between tradition and modernity' specifically for those narratives annexed to, and elaborated within, the frameworks of romantic nationalism. By regarding Burke's central text in such a way, Deane explains, he can be seen as a 'founder of discursivity' according to Foucault's well-known terms. (1) This essay argues that the Reflections functions as a foundational text for a larger set of discursive practices--those of Eurocentrism. Organically linked to romantic nationalism, Eurocentrism operates by positing otherness in order to define sameness, aggressively identifying that which is beyond the pale as a way of delimiting the 'humanity' residing within it. Of the textual genres participating and heavily invested in Eurocentrism at the end of the eighteenth century, travel writing is arguably the most extensive. Deane, in fact, is the first critic to note the striking family resemblance between Reflections and travel writing, and this essay pursues his suggestion into an analysis of it as such. For the Reflections gains much of its strength from its affinity to travelogues, and in so doing implicates itself in the wider representational and political strategies of Eurocentrism.