Exotics

When Europe set out to colonise the world, its travellers laid the foundation for a legacy whose end is still hard to see. And this is not even meant as a comment on globalised capitalism or on the ease of international movement nowadays but on the impact of the Western colonial endeavour on personal identity. Is there still a place in the world where one can define oneself wholly apart from Western identity? The question is wrongly posed, of course, since our concept of identity is by and large a Western construct – and yet there seems to be something universally appealing in having an identity so defined. Its like a product that is first invented, and the need for it follows.