Joshua Krueger #3042188
CRS/IDS 4910 – Conflict and the Construction of the
Other
Richard McCutcheon; November 21, 2011
Think Piece #9: The Colonial Gaze
Colonialism, it
seems, has not been purged from our ideologies. Though I would like to think
that our current generation is one based more on understanding, or at least toleration,
it seems that our present is not very far removed from our history. Staring
into our contemporary colonial mirror of the Middle East, it is tempting to
explain away the brutal realities as spawning from complex geopolitical factors
that need to be understood within rigorous frameworks. The situation is not
simple, but it is also not beyond a reasonable comprehension. The difficulty
remains in allowing ourselves to see past the amputations of facts given as truth
and the racist, ethnocentric knowledge that supports such illogical claims.
Derek Gregory attempts to
“recover the histories of Britain and the United States in Afghanistan,
Palestine, and Iraq;”[1]
histories that have either been denied by colonial amnesia or dismembered by
colonial nostalgia. He reminds us “to recall the part we are called to play –
and continue to play – in the performance of the colonial present.”[2]
Our part is not the overt violence of firing weapons or controlling predator drones
but the simple task of accepting doctrine and subsuming questions such as ‘why
do they hate us?’ Until we realize that we have become a Victor Frankenstein of
history, stitching together useful pieces of reality to create an unnatural
abomination, we will not be able to remove ourselves from the discursive power
of such questions. It is our responsibility to show how our lives are more
intertwined than we would like to admit, even though we are given the luxury of
being able to deny that fact.
The ability to deny our
worldwide connection and shared humanity is contained within the way we are
taught to look at the Other. Derek Gregory commonly uses the word gaze. This colonial gaze, sanctioned by
might, is the ability to give meaning to all things. Not only does it have the
ability to represent Baghdad as an urban fortification of dangers to American
troops, but it can also instantly reproduce Baghdad as the home of a grateful
and liberated people. Meanwhile, American troops are transformed from the brute
force of an illegal invasion into “universal soldiers fighting for a
transcendent Good.”[3] The
true power of the colonial gaze though, is the ability to seamlessly switch
between each ‘objective’ representation, completely erasing any previous reality
and remaining unfazed as to explain any connection between each
representations. With the colonial gaze a corporeal object – like Baghdad or
the Iraqi people – is only the canvas on which a number of different realities
can be created.
Some might think that this gaze
is just another example of the normal affects of war on truth, with its ability
to distort and hide, but the colonial gaze is a stronger force. In a horrifying
example, Derek Gregory shows how the logic of this gaze, which has painted all
Iraqi’s as either savages or docile villagers, allows Britain’s Defence
Secretary Geoffrey Hoon to reasonably deny the evidence of a coalition massacre
by stating an argument that requires Iraqis to be far less than human.[4]
Only the colonial gaze, with its foundation of Orientalism and tradition of
dehumanization, can callous a person
enough to see the actions of human compassion and directly reinterpret them for
proof of evil, or allow a politician to publically state that they will “not
lose sleep over” the fact that innocent civilians have been turned into “pink
mist.”[5]
The colonial gaze is not a simple tool of war propaganda, but an entire mode of
seeing that not only justifies war but sanctions it.
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