Abstract
This chapter considers popular representations of the-end-of-history narrative. This discourse refers to the idea that the historical development of humanity in the West culminates in the universal recognition of human freedom, which is in turn associated with the successful spread of unregulated capitalism to the world. Through a reading of a recent New York Times article, “Young Rural Women in India Chase Big-City Dreams,” the chapter argues that such a narrative enables structural violence in the West and in the “developing” contexts on which these narratives are based. This violence, moreover, relies on Orientalist binaries of Western capitalist freedom versus backward non-Western traditions.
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Notes
- 1.
All unattributed quotes henceforth refer to Ellen Barry, “Young Rural Women in India Chase Big-City Dreams.” See second entry in References.
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Mangharam, M.L. (2019). Global Inequality. In: Hadley, E., Jaffe, A., Winter, S. (eds) From Political Economy to Economics through Nineteenth-Century Literature. Palgrave Studies in Literature, Culture and Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24158-2_10
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