Status Updates From Culture and Imperialism

canicule !

“We are entitled to ask how this body of humanistic ideas co-existed so comfortably with imperialism, and why there was little significant opposition to empire at home. … In the great, humane ideas and values promulgated by mainstream European culture, we have precisely that ‘mould of ideas or conditioned reflexes’ of which Kiernan speaks, into which the whole business of empire later flowed.”

"Even oppositional thinkers like Marx and Engels were no less capable of such pronouncements [...]. [They] relied on colonial documents, the fully encoded discourse of Orientalism [...]. [When] Engels spoke of the Moors of Algeria [...] he was merely quoting French colonial theory."

was not expecting this!!! shots fired!! 🍿

i know it seems like i'm trudging along this book with my clown self logging in every 10-page progress but it's substantially more enjoyable than i originally thought. the reality is that i am simply not a fast reader.

anyway, i did not know the great game and the white man's burden were concepts coined by rudyard kipling. the invention of tradition. huh. man sure was busy.

"BP's ideas about 'boyology' fed these images directly into a grand scheme of imperial authority culminating in the great Boy Scout structure 'fortifying the wall of empire', which confirmed this inventive conjunction of fun and service in row after row of bright-eyed, eager and resourceful little middle-class servants of empire."

savage takedown of the boy scouts by mr said

'And it is certainly true that many great aesthetic objects if empire are remembered and admired without the baggage of domination that they carried through the process from gestation to production. Yet the empire remains, in inflection and traces, to be read, seen, and heard.'

bars!!

me reading about aida while having never seen or heard aida

+37

i had never really considered anthropology and geography as imperialist sciences. one of those commentaries that in hindsight are fairly obvious, but someone has to point them out first

emerges from a fog clutching saïd

"Most professional humanists as a result are unable to make the connection between the prolonged and sordid cruelty of practices such as slavery, colonialist and racial oppression, and imperial subjection on the one hand, and the poetry, fiction, philosophy of the society that engages in these practices on the other."

my office desk book

Will be taking my time getting through this one, but after just finishing the introduction I already know that this is going to make my reading of books like "Taiwan Travelogue" and "The Bombshell" that much more interesting