Kipling, Rudyard,--1865-1936--Criticism and interpretation

The works of Kipling are generally read under the discursive ideology of Orientalism. According to Edward Said, Orientalism is an institution for dominating the Orient with Foucauldian power/knowledge. While much of Kipling's work falls easily within the lines of Orientalism, important exceptions disrupt this singular reading. The hybrid character Kim, for example, demonstrates an uncertainty concerning the identity of the Anglo-Indian as colonizer constructed along racial lines, where white Anglo-Indian represents colonizer and brown Indian represents colonized. This simplified racial division is further problematized by Kipling's attention to social class in other works of prose and verse, which place the lower-class white Anglo-Indians as subjects of the colonial system. In addition, Kipling's work often shows an ambivalence concerning the legitimacy of British rule. Therefore, Bakhtin's heteroglossia more appropriately accounts for Kipling's ideological complexity than does the singular ideology of Orientalism.