Joshua Krueger #3042188
CRS/IDS 4910 – Conflict and the Construction of the
Other
Richard McCutcheon; October 17, 2011
Think Piece #4: Design or Destiny
In my second Think
Piece, Aimé Césaire allowed me to ask the question of where I had subsumed the
invention of the barbaric negro. While I am hesitant to say that Edward Said has
answered that question, his book Culture
and Imperialism brings the ambiguity surrounding the question into a calm
look of action and reaction. I do not wish to reduce Said’s work, but I understand
his argument as showing the relationship of consequences that we take for
granted in many other settings. Why do more baseball players come from the
United States and hockey players come from Canada? It is not because Canadians
are more genetically suited for hockey or because Americans are afraid of ice,
but it might have something to do with the fact that American youth, through
their upbringing in the US, are much more likely to know the career statistics
of Babe Ruth than those of Wayne Gretzky. Furthermore, with the amount of money
that can be made by a professional athlete, and a culture that equates money
with value, there is an underwritten assumption that becoming a baseball player
is a much higher calling than being an office worker. This is the same logic
that imperialist culture whispered to their young men and women: being a
soldier or a colonial adventurer is a more honourable position than being a
farmer.
This relationship of mutual
support, once it has been pointed out, is so straightforward and common to me
that I wonder about the black hole that this knowledge has been kept in. In
this sense Said’s work is tearing the veil and bringing down the structures
that have conditioned my mind to believe in certain categories of specialness
and limitation; categories that are pooled up like beads of sweat from the twisting
marathon of economics and politics.
The
point that still confuses me though, is how such a relationship began. I
understand that once the system of imperialism and a basic level of cultural
justification existed, both would naturally support each other, but I do not
understand how this came to be. Did they both spring up together, or was there
some agency by Western powers to adjust culture to their economic interests? On
the other hand, Said quotes William Blake’s words: “Empire follows Art and not
vice versa as Englishmen suppose”[1];
does that mean that English artists designed the systems of imperialism and
colonialism?
The
part of Said’s argument that is so compelling to me is the fact that it coheres
to the theory that all people justify evil because they think they are serving
a higher good. In the case of empire, Said calls this, through the help of
Conrad, the “self-confirming ideological motor.”[2]
While I do think that humans would intentionally repair and refuel the machine[3]
– because their entire identity in contained within the context of the machine
– I doubt that there is one person or group that is evil (and powerful) enough
to intentionally build that motor outside or before the power of its
rationalizing context. Does that mean that there was another force, an inherent
and inevitable evil within the West or within all of humanity that leads to
such relationships of domination?
In
another part, Said states that this relationship of culture and identity is
present in all modern cultures, even suggesting that special
experiences are “historically created and the result of interpretation.”[4]
If all modern cultures use categories to include and exclude, what happens when
we attempt to remove ourselves from the dominant categories our cultures
provide for us? Is there a way to remove ourselves from the dehumanizing or
limiting categories of our culture while still retaining useful frames of
reference and a place to belong? Edward Said is very aware of the way that
western culture marginalizes him and his experiences, but this position also
seems to free him to criticize Western culture without the risk of losing his
cultural support or immediate community. Can I reject certain categories and
still relate to those who accept them? If I do need to remove myself more
fully, to which group or culture can I belong? Is there the possibility of
culture without such categories?
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