Blog: October

The empire at work

For the European of the late nineteenth century, an interesting range of opinions are offered, all premised upon the subordination and victimization of the native. One is a self-forgetting delight in the use of power--the power to observe, rule, hold, and profit from distant territories and people. [...] Another is an ideological rationale for reducing, then reconstituting the native as someone to be ruled and managed. [...] Third is the idea of Western salvation and redemption through its "civilizing mission." Supported jointly by the experts in ideas (missionaries, teachers, advisers, scholars) and in modern industry and communication, the imperial idea of westernizing the backward achieved permanent status world0wide, but, as Michael Adas and others have shown, it was always accompanied by domination. Fourth is the security of a situation that permits the conqueror not to look into the truth of the violence he does. The idea of culture itself, as Arnold refined it, is designed to elevate practice to the level of theory, to liberate ideological coercion against rebellious elements--at home and abroad-- from the mundane and historical to the abstract and general. [...] Fifth is the process by which, after the natives have been displaced from their historical location on their land, their history is rewritten as a function of the imperial one. This process uses narrative to dispel contradictory memories and occlude violence--the exotic replaces the impress of power with the blandishments of curiosity--with the imperial presence so dominating as to make impossible any effort to separate it from historical necessity. All these together create an amalgam of the arts of narrative and observation about the accumulated, dominated, and ruled territories whose inhabitants seem destined never to escape, to remain creatures of European will. [p.131]
Culture and Imperialism
Eduard Said

Posted on:
2008.10.27 -0500

Tags:
homo homini lupus , texts

Contrapuntual reading

[...] in short, the metropolis gets its authority to a considerable extent from the devaluation as well as the exploitation of the outlying colonial possession. [p.59]

[...]

In practical terms, "contrapuntual reading" as I have called it means reading a text with an understanding of what is involved when an author shows, for instance, that a colonial sugar plantation is seen as important to the process of maintaining a particular style of life in England. [p.66]

Culture and Imperialism
Edward Said

Posted on:
2008.10.16 -0500

Tags:
texts

Towards fat-free music?

To make the most magic with the least means. To suggest, rather than portray.

Posted on:
2008.10.15 -0500

Tags:
Los ingenieros del tiempo , music