The language of contemporary cultural theory shows remarkable similarities to the patterns of thought which characterized the Victorian's views of race. Far from being marked by a separation from the racialized thinking of the past, Colonial Desire illustrates how we are operating in complicity with historical ways of viewing 'the other,' both sexually and racially.





Colonial Desire is a controversial and bracing study of the history of Englishness and 'culture.' Robert Young argues that the theories advanced today about post-colonialism and ethnicity are disturbingly close to the colonial discourse of the nineteenth century. 'Englishness,' Young argues, has been less fixed and stable than uncertain, fissured with difference and a desire for otherness.