Beyond Agent vs. Instrument: The Neo-Coloniality of Drones in Contemporary Warfare

Niklas Balbon

Aug 3 2022 •

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On the 7th of December 2021, a new coalition government in Germany took office that contractually agreed on equipping the German military with armed drones (Koalitionsvertrag 2021: 149). To people familiar with drone programs of countries like the US, this might not seem like a newsworthy decision. However, given the year-long—and in part bitterly held—debate around the acquisition of armed drones in Germany (Franke 2021), it underscores an important point: armed drones are a highly contested technology. In fact, evaluations of drones range all the way from the most humane and accurate mode of warfare (Strawser 2012) to “inherently colonialist technologies” (Gusterson 2016: 149). While far away from unanimity, there has been a recent shift in scholarship on drones, which increasingly investigates its ties to neo-colonialism (Shaw 2016; Gusterson 2016; Parks 2016; Vasko 2013; Akther 2019; Espinoza 2018). However, literature on the coloniality of drones remains unspecific on the question of whether drones should be seen as a tool or as a driver of neo-colonialism. For instance, Akther identifies drones as “the latest technological manifestation of a much older logic of state power” (Akther 2019: 69), which implies an instrumentalist view. In contrast, other scholars argue that the development of drones has influenced our understanding of what constitutes legitimate warfare (McDonald 2017: 21), thus offering a substantivist view on technology. These diverging claims raise a fundamental question about the relationship between military technology and neo-colonialism: can military technology be seen as more than a mere tool to achieve neo-colonial ambitions?

To answer this question, I conduct a case study on drone technology, which has been discussed as an instance of the intersection of neo-colonialism and technology. The case study design is fruitful because it allows for a high degree of detail and contextualization (Gerring 2007: 103) while granting the possibility to test the theories (Muno 2009: 119) of instrumentalism and substantivism. As I will show, neo-colonial theory presupposes an instrumental character of the means through which colonial relationships are being maintained. Accordingly, drones can be seen as instruments of neo-colonialism, as they give the Global North new means to assert necropower, (re)create peripheries of insecurity and engage in social policing and ordering. However, the potential for instrumentalization of drones should not overshadow their own transformative character. As I will show, the development of drones has led to a discourse around unilateral, precise, and surgical drone warfare, which changed perceptions, policies, and interpretations of law on what constitutes legitimate warfare and intervention. Therefore, I argue that we should conceptualize drones both as instruments as well as drivers of neo-colonialism, thus challenging the dichotomy of instrumentalist and substantivist views on the nexus of neo-colonialism and technology.[1]

To make this case, I will start by reflecting upon the theoretical foundations of this essay (neo-colonialism, instrumentalism, substantivism, and agency) and by showcasing that neo-colonial theory implies an instrumental understanding of technology. This will be followed by investigating how drones can be used for neo-colonial purposes. Finally, I will illustrate the transformative character of drones and discuss its implications for our understanding of the relationship between technology and neo-colonialism.

The Continuation of Colonialism by Other Means

In 1965, Kwane Nkrumah introduced the concept of neo-colonialism as “imperialism in its final and perhaps most dangerous stage” (Nkrumah 1965: 1). For Nkrumah, colonial relationships between states did not end with the formal process of decolonization. Instead, a post-colonial state is “in theory, independent and has all the outward trappings of international sovereignty. In reality its economic system and thus its political policy is directed from outside” (Nkrumah 1965: 1). Accordingly, the transition from formal colonization to neo-colonialism only changes the means through which colonial power relations are maintained, but it did not end colonial aspirations of the Global North per se (Rahman et al. 2017: 9f.). In Nkrumah’s work, neo-colonial means are foremost of economic nature (Nkrumah 1965: 239ff.). In this tradition, scholars have pointed out a multitude of mechanisms through which the global north exerts influence on economic decision-making of post-colonial countries (Chang 2002: Stiglitz 2003). However, neo-colonial scholarship has also considered other means, including those of cultural, political, and militaristic nature (Uzoigwe 2019: 66). This is important to recognize as there is no a priori justification to focus the study of colonial continuities solely on economic mechanisms. Neo-colonialism can thus be understood as a regime of interconnected economic, political, and cultural mechanisms, through which colonial power relations are (re)constructed in a (formally) post-colonial age. Or to put it in Clausewitzian words: neo-colonialism is the continuation of colonialism by other means.

This understanding of neo-colonialism implies an instrumentalist view of the means through which (neo)colonial power relations are maintained. It assigns agency to the colonizing subjects while reducing the mechanisms through which colonial power is exerted to mere tools, thus offering a distinction between colonial aspirations and colonial capabilities. When looking at the intersection of neo-colonialism and military technology, the instrumentalist character of neo-colonial theory corresponds with instrumentalist views on the relationship between war and technology. Instrumentalist theory conceptualizes technology as a neutral tool, which can be used by actors to achieve a variety of ends (Bourne 2012: 142). This principle can be illustrated by the National Rifle Association in the United States, which argues that it is not the gun that harms people, but the person using the gun (Jones 1999: 70). In instrumentalist theory, technology is understood as “subservient to values established in other spheres i.e. politics and culture” (Jones 1999: 70), which means that technology as such is not involved in the construction of social norms on the use of violence. Rather, the use of technology is determined by socially constructed norms (Bourne 2012: 143). Despite their resonance in the literature (Jones 1999: 70), instrumentalist accounts of the relationship between war and technology do not remain uncontested. As hinted at in the introduction, they are challenged by substantivists (also known as deterministic) understandings of technology (Bourne 2012: 143). Substantivist approaches identify technology as a driving force of social change and thus war (Jones 1999: 108). Accordingly, substativist theory understands technology as more than just a mere tool and attributes technology with agency (Bourne 2012: 143).

As agency is a very contested term in the social sciences and in philosophy, it is worth taking a closer look at what the concept means. Understandings of individual agency range all the way from voluntarism, which sees society as the mere sum of decisions of autonomous individuals, granting them full agency; to determinism, which sees individual decision-making as solely determined by societal structures and norms, thus neglecting individual agency (Sibeon 1999: 139). Embarking from a social-constructivist perspective, I join deterministic theories in acknowledging the importance of social norms and structures in influencing the decision-making of individuals (March/Olsen 2004: 3; Dahrendorf 1965: 45f.). Nevertheless, we should not fall into a deterministic trap, thinking that this denies individuals any form of self-determined decision-making or agency (Weissmann 2020: 47). Additionally, as structures and norms are social constructs, individuals also possess agency in their (re)construction (Hess et al. 2018: 253). Therefore, I reject both a strictly voluntaristic as well as a deterministic view on agency. The identification of agency is further complicated by the question of whether material objects can possess agency, as for instance argued by Latour (2005), or if agency is exclusive to humans. Based on the understanding of agency introduced above, it is possible to conclude that the ability to make autonomous decisions should not be seen as a necessary condition for agency. Instead, it can be argued that by influencing the construction of social norms, even material objects can possess agency.

The understanding of agency introduced above corresponds with both instrumentalist and substantivist theories. From an instrumentalist perspective, it is possible to argue that agency lies exclusively with humans because they construct norms about the instrumentalization of technology. A substantivist perspective challenges this assumption by arguing that technology determines the construction of social norms and therefore deserves to be attributed with agency. In the following, I will examine both assumptions by looking at the nexus of neo-colonialism and drone technology.

New Methods for Old Games? Neo-Colonialism and Drone Technology

As argued above, the concept of neo-colonialism implies an instrumentalist interpretation of the means through which neo-colonial power relations are maintained (e.g. technology). Indeed, the literature on drone technology[2] offers accounts that support this claim. For instance, there is a growing amount of literature that ties drone technology to neo-colonial forms of necropolitics (Allinson 2015; Espinoza 2018; Qurratulen/Raza 2021; Wilcox 2017). Deriving from Foucault’s notion of biopolitics (Foucault 1976), Mbembe developed the concept of necropolitics to problematize how (colonial) states subordinate the lives of people they deem worthy to die, to people they deem worthy to live (Mbembe 2003). Accordingly, the “ultimate expression of sovereignty resides (…) in the power to dictate who may live and who may die” (Mbembe 2003: 11). Necropolitics are a decisive characteristic of colonial rule (Mbembe 2003: 18), which for example could be observed in the province of Punjab in colonial India, where the British colonizers terrorized and killed parts of the population to protect themselves and their colonial rule (Condos 2017). In Punjab, the British established a practice of ‘cannonading’, during which Indian rebels and individuals suspected of undermining the British colonial state were placed in front of a cannon and brutally killed (Condos 2017: 158).

However, as the example of drone technology shows, necropolitics is not exclusive to the age of formal colonization but can still be observed as tools of neo-colonialism today (Vasko 2013: 86). Espinoza argues that within the ‘global war on terror’, drones are used to identify and attack people that are deemed dangerous and thus subordinate to the national security of the west (Espinoza 2018: 383). Beyond targeted killings, this logic of protection is taken even further by so-called ‘signature strikes’—a version of drone warfare in which unknown individuals are identified and targeted by drones because they resemble characteristics similar to those of terrorists (McQuade 2021: 2). In a case study on drone warfare in the Afghan region of Uruzgan, Allinson shows how Afghan military-aged men are essentialized as “a threat that must be eliminated by death” (Allinson 2015: 126) and consequently met with lethal force. The similarities between the necropolitics during the time of formal colonialism and current necropolitical forms of drone warfare can therefore be seen as an instance of the neo-colonial instrumentalization of drone technology.

Necropolitics further manifest themselves through assigning the colonized others with spaces of insecurity, while creating spaces of security for colonizers (Mbembe 2003: 26ff). As pointed out by Fanon (1967), this practice of spatialization is an integral part of colonial endeavors that can also be observed in neo-colonial drone warfare (Akther 2019; Gregory 2017). With the help of drones, states can create neo-colonial spaces, where racialized groups are subject to surveillance and state violence (Akther 2019: 65). Drones are therefore constitutive for the construction of global peripheries that are subordinate to the security of the center, i.e. western nation-states (Akther 2019: 65). The resulting construction of socio-spatial inequalities between center and peripheries resembles practices observed during the formal age of colonialism and can thus be seen as another instance for the neo-colonial instrumentalization of drone technology.

A final example of the neo-colonial instrumentalization of drones can be seen in their use for social ordering and policing. This is important to recognize because the impact of drone warfare on civilians goes far beyond lethal violence (Cavallaro et al. 2012: 73ff.). In a case study on the effect of drones on civilians in Afghanistan, Edney-Browne found that drones have an ordering and policing effect on civilians in two ways. Firstly, populations that are aware of the possibility of them being surveilled by a drone at any given time, change their behavior by avoiding social gatherings and not leaving their houses at night (Edney-Browne 2019: 1942). This benefits western militaries as it makes civilians restrained from forming groups that could organize resistance (Edney-Browne 2019: 1349). Secondly, the possibility of signature strikes forces Afghans to consider their appearance to drone operators and self-police their behavior to avoid being identified as possible threats (Edney-Browne 2019: 1350)—a behavior similar to what could be observed during the time of colonial air policing in the early 20th century (Edney-Browne 2019: 1350).

In sum, the above-mentioned practices of necropolitics, peripherization and social policing and ordering provide evidence for an instrumentalist view on drone technology. As demonstrated, the phenomena per se are not new. Instead, drone technology provides new opportunities to pursue colonial ambitions. Nevertheless, this should not lead us to the conclusion that drones are mere instruments of neo-colonialism, as I will show below.

More Than Means to an End? Drones and the Construction of Norms

Despite their potential for instrumentalization, the transformative character of drones should not be overlooked. The development of drones has led to a discourse around so-called humane forms of warfare that are characterized by “efficiency, surgical precision, and minimal casualties” (Parks/Kaplan 2019: 4). This is important because through promoting the idea of ‘clean wars’ (McDonald 2017), drones have changed our collective perception of what forms of violence are deemed appropriate (Bode/Huelss 2018: 404f). and thus promoted neo-colonial intervention. To understand this normative shift, it is necessary to unpack how drones have influenced our perception, policies, and interpretations of law on the use of violence in international relations.

As pointed out by Chamayou, public opinion on the use of force in foreign policy is heavily shaped by the fear of losing their own troops (Chamayou 2013: 127f.). This makes the drone the optimal weapon for intervention as it removes troops from battlegrounds and eliminates any chance of reciprocity, leading to a ‘unilateralization’ of violence (Chamayou 2013: 13). Additionally, the alleged precision of drone technology allows governments to present drones as the solution to the problem of collateral damage (Espinoza 2018: 377). This is important because it seemingly increases the congruence of drone warfare with the liberal values of the western public (Agius 2017: 371). In conjuncture, these factors can be seen as constitutive for a normative liberalization of our perception of when the use of violence is deemed appropriate (Bode/Huelss 2018: 405). The translation of this normative shift into policy becomes visible when looking at the proliferation and the use of drones. For instance, the Obama administration had administered ten times more drone strikes than the previous Bush administration (Purkiss/Serle 2017), despite its seemingly more liberal stance on foreign policy. The change of policy is accompanied by a change in interpretations of international law. This was necessary because—be it for manned or unmanned weapons—international law requires justification for (violent) intervention in foreign countries (Hajjar 2017: 72ff). To describe the process of states re-interpreting international law to legalize their actions such as drone warfare, Hajjar has coined the term “state lawfare” (Hajjar 2017: 61). For instance, Israel and the United States have re-interpreted the right of self-defense to accommodate for conducting drone operations against non-state actors within countries that they have not been attacked by (Hajjar 2017: 64ff).

The abovementioned examples illustrate that drones pose transformative power regarding the construction of norms in warfare. But how does this tie to neo-colonialism? As explained in the previous section, drone warfare can be regarded as inherently neocolonial (i.e., necropolitics, peripherization, social policing). The transformative power of drones however questions assumptions that drones are only involved in neo-colonial power relations as instruments. Because drone technology causes a liberalization of norms, policies, and interpretations of law on warfare, it can be argued that drones do not merely execute, but also actively promote neocolonial violence. In other words: by inflicting normative changes on the use of violence, drones have contributed to a normalization of neo-colonial warfare. Therefore, they should be regarded both as an instrument and as a driver of neo-colonialism and attributed with agency. This offers valuable insights into the relationship between military technology and neo-colonialism in general: instead of thinking about technology and neo-colonialism in the dichotomous categories of instrumentalism and substantivism, we should embrace an approach that considers the co-constitutive relationship between the two. Both perspectives offer valuable insights into the relationship between neo-colonialism and technology and must not be seen as mutually exclusive. Simply put, military technology both executes and constitutes neo-colonialism.

Conclusion

By conducting a case study on drones, I have investigated the relationship between military technology and neo-colonialism and examined instrumentalist and substantivist theories on technology and war. The case study shows that the dichotomy between instrumentalism and substantivism is overly simplistic and cannot accurately capture the relationship between technology and neo-colonialism. Instead, I have argued that drones provide an example of military technology that executes and drives neocolonial power relations. These results are important as they underline that military technology, even (or especially) when described as humane and precise, can never be politically neutral. The multilayered relationship between military technology and neo-colonialism further indicates a fruitful avenue for future research. For instance, despite being touched upon above, the role of capitalism and the military industry remains under reflected. In this regard, the role of the drone industry is to promote the narrative of a ‘clean war’ to increase revenue from drone sales. Questions like this can help to better understand the multilayered entanglement of neo-colonialism and technology and should thus be investigated in future research.

Footnotes

[1] This technopolitical understanding of drones leads to a more nuanced analysis of multiple agencies involved in neocolonial drone warfare. From a critical perspective, this is crucial as it helps to assign responsibilities as well as to identify points for resistance and emancipation. Accordingly, I situate myself within the domain of critical scholarship, which – alongside knowledge production – regards emancipation as a fundamental scientific objective (Horkheimer 1992: 58; Fierke 2015: 180f.).

[2] As pointed out by Chamayou (2013: 13), drone technology encompasses a variety of remote-control devices that operate on land, in the sea, and in the air. In this essay, I restrict myself to the analysis of unmanned, airborne drones that can be used for surveillance and to apply lethal force through rockets.

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Further Reading on E-International Relations

The Meaning of US Drone Warfare in the War on Terror
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‘Drone Vision’: Precision Ethics Theory and the Royal Air Force’s use of Drones
The Coloniality of Gender and the Politics of Difference
The Use of “Remote” Warfare: A Strategy to Limit Loss and Responsibility
Do Advances in Synthetic Biology have the Potential to Transform the Future of Warfare?

FRANTZ FANON’S INSIGHTFUL ANALYSIS: 5 TRANSFORMATIVE LESSONS FROM ‘THE WRETCHED OF THE EARTH’

IKRAAM SHARIF (AUTHOR), CHARLIE SØRENSEN (EDITOR)
November 22, 2023

Frantz Fanon examines the effects of colonialism in his book ‘The Wretched of the Earth’ (TWOFE) by reviewing the decolonisation process and global advancements in freedom. This book also emphasises how colonialism reduced the human dignity of those violently colonised and the clear need for a robust response to remove colonialism as well as its overall effect on the psyche of the people.

Frantz Fanon was a well-known author and scholar. He was born in 1925 and raised in Martinique’s French territory. Thus, his firsthand experiences with racism, colonialism, and the regal control of global powers directly influenced his commitment to the topic.

This book review discusses the varied concepts of colonialism, violence and psychology and the book’s relevance to society to summarise the book’s impact.


“In the colonies the truth stood naked, but the citizens of the mother country preferred it with clothes on: the native had to love them, something in the way mothers are loved.”J.P Sartre & F. Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth.
The Dynamics of Violence and Decolonisation in Fanon’s Perspective

In the first chapter, ‘Concerning Violence’, we are introduced to the first concept – violence. Frantz Fanon emphasises how decolonisation is inherently violent. Colonialism is fierce from the start and never stops being violent. He notes that “their [the colonies] first encounter was marked by violence and their existence together […] was carried on by dint of a great array of bayonets and canon” (Fanon, 1963, p.36). Violence is the only way for it to end.

He emphasises the value of self-respect and self-discovery, one of his defences against violence. This focus deserves praise since it is global and addresses all colonised people. According to Frantz Fanon, excessive violence enables the colonised to realise that he is not who the coloniser has made him believe he is via belittling, vilifying, and punishing him.

To “[drive] into the locals’ heads the concept that if the settlers were to depart, they would at once fall back into barbarism, degradation, and bestiality,” the coloniser not only “distorts, disfigures, and destroys” pre-colonial history but also psychologically degrades the native (Fanon, 1963, p.210). Here, Fanon creates a striking portrait of the colonised people’s lack of regard for themselves before the liberation that violence grants them. He emphasises that the colonised should not look up to or idolise the settlers.
Fanon’s Exploration of Colonialism’s Psychological Impact

The native is free from “his inferiority complex and his despair and inaction; it makes him fearless and restores his self-respect,” according to Fanon, who describes violence as a “cleaning force” (Fanon, 1963, pg. 94). Once more, Frantz Fanon uses emotive language that tremendously appeals to colonised readers. To portray something as unpleasant and destructive as violence in a good light is an intriguing idea.

A revolution’s use of violence can bring people together and spark a national movement where they can vent the repressed wrath caused by colonialism. Sonnleitner notes in ‘Of Logic and Liberation: Frantz Fanon on Terrorism’ that it is “personally therapeutic” (Sonnleitner, 1987, p.291). Using the adjective “therapeutic” to describe something violent and oppressive, such as colonialism, can arguably be disrespectful to the colonised.

However, whether you agree with Fanon’s moral argument when colonised people have been denied a means of expressing their sentiments for so long, his claim that violence fosters self-respect can be valid.

Fanon claims violence must be acknowledged. As we have seen, he contends that using violence brings about self-respect, self-discovery, and independence. Yet, he goes on to devote chapter five, ‘Colonial World and Mental Disorders’, to the mental illnesses and disorders that are direct results of violence in colonial times.

As readers, we are simultaneously being considered to understand that Fanon is arguing the justification of violence to gain self-respect and how it can damage the psyche of the native people – so which one is it? Does violence damage the mind of the colonised, or does it leave the colonised the ability to fight for freedom and against oppression?
Reconciling Violence with Mental Health in Colonial Contexts

Fanon claims violence must be acknowledged. As we have seen, he contends that using violence brings about self-respect, self-discovery, and independence. Yet, he goes on to devote chapter five, ‘Colonial World and Mental Disorders’, to the mental illnesses and disorders that are direct results of violence in colonial times.

As readers, we are simultaneously being considered to understand that Fanon is arguing the justification of violence to gain self-respect and how it can damage the psyche of the native people – so which one is it? Does violence damage the mind of the colonised, or does it leave the colonised the ability to fight for freedom and against oppression?
Frantz Fanon’s Legacy and the Continued Relevance of ‘The Wretched of the Earth’

Fanon maintains that the atmosphere of a “Manichaean world” (Fanon, 1963, pg. 41) is a primary reason for the general decline in mental health throughout the colonial era. This analogy is for the colonial world, which is morally distinct and geographically separated into two zones.

The author describes this dichotomy when he writes about how the settler’s realm is physically advanced, secure, and clean, and it is abundant with all the resources required for a sustainable way of life; “a well-fed town, an easy-going town; its belly is always full of good things” whilst the town of the colonised is “a place of ill fame, peopled by men of evil repute … hungry town, starved of bread, of meat, of shoes, of coal, of light” (Fanon, 1963, pp.38–39).

The juxtaposing language used to explain the opposite nature demonstrates how the settlers could prosper in the land that belonged to someone else – the natives. Essentially, “Manicheism […] dehumanises the native [and] it turns him into an animal” (Fanon, 1963, p.42). Thus demonstrating that colonisation has dehumanising effects on the people and the nation and causes negative emotions such as bitterness and resentment.

As a psychiatrist, Frantz Fanon holds the same position that the brutality of colonialism has contributed to an increase in mental illnesses and disorders. In chapter five, Fanon meticulously identifies the subtle differences among the many instances of mental illness brought on by colonial violence.

Fanon is aware of a direct relationship between the two concepts, which tends to have a long-lasting effect even after decolonisation. Therefore, Fanon’s claim that violence is a “cleansing force” (Fanon, 1963, pg. 94) is weak because he has already explained in detail how targeted acts of violence and an overall climate of physical insecurity cause a wide range of mental disorders, such as depression, PTSD, hallucinations, and many others.
The Algerian War: A Deep Dive into Colonialism’s Psychological and Physical Traumas

In his book, Fanon explores the Algerian War and how colonialism is a “fertile purveyor for psychiatric hospitals” (Fanon, 1963, p.249). As the war for freedom progressed, there was significant damage to the people that left them institutionalised in hospitals. He writes case studies on person B, an Algerian man who had “insomnia and persistent headaches” (Fanon, 1963, p.254) and how B’s wife had been “dishonoured” by a French officer who told B to forget about her (Fanon, 1963, p.255).

This is another illustration of the heinous atrocities of colonialism. The fact that B’s wife is raped to get close to B underlines the utter dominance of the French colonists over the Algerian people. However, it is interesting to note that in all his cases, Fanon focuses on the impact of the physical violence of colonialism and does not include how sexual violence was used in the Algerian war.


This point is not to diminish the physical violence of colonialism. But if violence is to be considered, all types of violence must be included – especially sexual violence. Branche explores in ‘Sexual Violence in the Algerian War’ (2009) how sexual violence was prevalent in the Algerian War and how “rapes happened, and repeatedly happened” (Branche, 2009, p.248).

She explores how the systematic use of sexual abuse was a technique of cruelty and humiliation (for both men and women) committed by the French army. It was a brutal, dehumanising, and consistent torture, and although death was typically the outcome, it was not the intended outcome.

Colonialism directly links to other types of violence different from physical violence. Branche examines this when Fanon does not discuss it in his book, though it is crucial to understanding colonialism and violence.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Branche, R., 2009. Sexual Violence in the Algerian War. In: D. Herzog, ed. Brutality and Desire: War and Sexuality in Europe’s Twentieth Century, Genders, and Sexualities in History. [online] London: Palgrave Macmillan UK. pp.247–260. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230234291_10.

Burke, E., 1976. Frantz Fanon’s ‘The Wretched of the Earth’. Daedalus, 105(1), pp.127–135.

Fanon, F., 1963. The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press.

Ighilahriz, L (2001) Algérienne (gathered by Anne Nivat), Paris: Fayard/Calmann-Levy.

Sonnleitner, M.W., 1987. Of Logic and Liberation: Frantz Fanon on Terrorism. Journal of Black Studies, 17(3), pp.287–304.

 Fanon Goes to Palestine

by Randy Shields / July 4th, 2024

Decolonization is always a violent event.
– Frantz Fanon

From Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth, I substituted Palestine and Palestinians for “colonized” and Israel and Israelis for “colonizers.”

For the Palestinians, to be a moralist quite plainly means silencing the arrogance of the Israelis, breaking (their) spiral of violence, in a word ejecting them from the picture. (page 9)

The Israelis are no longer interested in staying on and coexisting once the colonial context has disappeared. (page 9) (Me: it’s already happening as thousands of Israelis in the past nine months have gone back to their ancient homelands of Rockaway and Woodland Hills.)

Israel only loosens its hold when the knife is at its throat. Israel’s naked violence only gives in when confronted with greater violence. (page 23) (Me: actually it doesn’t take nearly as much as Hezbollah helped Israel discover in 2006.)

Palestinians have had it constantly drummed into them that the only language they understood was that of force, now they decide to express themselves with force. In fact the Israelis have always shown them the path they should follow to liberation. (page 42)

Palestinians register the enormous gaps left in their ranks as a kind of necessary evil. Since they have decided to respond with violence, they admit the consequences. (page 50)

The work of the Israelis is to make even dreams of liberty impossible for the Palestinians. The work of Palestinians is to imagine every possible method for annihilating the Israelis. (page 50) (Me: actually years ago Hamas accepted a “hudna,” a long-term truce based on the 1967 borders.)

(Me: actually Palestinians are much better people than Israelis.)

Violence is a cleansing force. It rids Palestinians of their inferiority complex, of their passive and despairing attitude. It emboldens them, and restores their self-confidence. (page 51) (Me: Palestinians’ 2018-2019 Gandhian non-violent Great March of Return was met with Israeli snipers killing 223 and injuring over 9,000 others.)

Whatever gains the Palestinians make through armed or political struggle, they are not the result of Israel’s good will or goodness of heart but to the fact that it can no longer postpone such concessions. (page 92)

Toward the end of The Wretched of Earth, Fanon details the diabolical tortures inflicted on Algerians (many by doctors, of course) and elaborate brainwashing techniques utilized by the French. For this paragraph on brainwashing, there’s no need to even substitute Palestine and Palestinians for Algeria and Algerians:

Algeria is not a nation, has never been a nation, and never will be. There is no such thing as the ‘Algerian people.’ Algerian patriotism is devoid of meaning. (page 214)

The world must unite to defeat Israel. The openly ethno-supremacist and genocidal actions and comments by Israel and its supporters are what happens when Israeli war crimes and human rights violations are allowed to fester for over seven decades. Israel is as if the Nazis were allowed to survive and continue their genocidal ways. Israel must be delivered its Stalingrad.

Randy Shields just released second book is Barackodile Tears: Obitchuaries on the Obama Years. He is also the author of Some Fantastic Place: Essays on Non-humans and Yahoomans. He can be reached at music2hi4thehumanear@gmail.com. Read other articles by Randy, or visit Randy's website.

Refusing the Language of Silence

The colonial application of digital technologies spurs Palestinian resistance

by Omar Zahzah / July 4th, 2024

It’s an increasingly familiar contradiction: digital platforms that position themselves as an accessible alternative to corporate media emerge as new censors in their own right. Social media and the internet make it possible to disseminate material that would otherwise have been suppressed, thereby helping to bring alternative conversations to the fore of mainstream awareness. And yet, for all of their hype and propaganda, the parent companies of these popular digital platforms are no less dedicated to the preservation of an imperialist status quo than their institutional predecessors, with all of the attendant silencing and repression this entails.

Big Tech’s handling of content critical of the Zionist state’s latest genocide of Palestinians in Gaza—described by former United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) spokesman Chris Gunnes as “the first genocide in the history of humanity that is livestreamed on television”—reveals that silencing is the norm. In this way, Big Tech companies reinforce Israeli settler colonialism through systemic anti-Palestinian policies. I analyze the meeting point between Big Tech and Zionist oppression of Palestinians as digital/settler-colonialism.

An Egregious Culprit

Facebook acquired Instagram on April 9, 2012, and rebranded itself as Meta on October 28, 2021. In addition to these other changes, the company has consistently worked to facilitate the censoring and repression of Palestinians on its platforms—often with deadly consequences. Israel relies on membership in WhatsApp groups as one of the data points for Lavender, the AI system it uses to generate “kill lists” of Palestinians in Gaza. Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) are not required to verify the accuracy of the “suspects” generated by the AI program, and make a point of bombing them when they are at home with their families. Another AI program, insidiously named “Where’s Daddy?,” helps the IOF track Palestinians targeted for assassination to see when they’re at home. As blogger, software engineer, and Tech for Palestine co-founder Paul Biggar notes, the fact that WhatsApp appears to be providing the IOF with metadata about its users’ groups means that Meta, the parent company of the messaging app, is not only lying about its promise of security but facilitating genocide.

This complicity in genocide has also assumed other, sometimes more subtle guises, including systematic erasure of support for Palestine from Meta’s platforms. On Tuesday, June 4, 2024, Ferras Hamad, a Palestinian American software engineer, launched a lawsuit against Meta when the company fired him after he used his expertise to investigate whether it was censoring Palestinian content creators. Among Hamad’s discoveries was that Instagram (owned by Meta) prevented the account of Motaz Azaiza, a popular Palestinian photojournalist from Gaza, from being recommended based on a false categorization of a video showing the leveling of a building in Gaza as pornography. Improper flagging based on automation is one of the key mechanisms by which pro-Palestine content is systematically removed from Meta’s platforms.

On February 8, 2024, The Intercept reported that Meta was considering a policy change that would have disastrous implications for digital advocacy for Palestine: identifying the term “Zionist” as a proxy for “Jew/Jewish” for content moderation purposes, a move that would effectively ban anti-Zionist speech on its platforms, Instagram and Facebook.

The revelation came as a result of a January 30 email Meta sent to civil society organizations soliciting feedback. This email was subsequently shared with The Intercept. Sam Biddle, the reporter of The Intercept piece, notes that the email said Meta was reconsidering its policy “in light of content that users and stakeholders have recently reported,” but it did not share the stakeholders’ identities or give direct examples of the content in question. Seventy-three civil society organizations, including Jewish Voice for Peace, 7amleh, MPower Change, and Palestine Legal, issued an open letter to Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg to protest the potential policy change.

“[T]his move will prohibit Palestinians from sharing their daily experiences and histories with the world, be it a photo of the keys to their grandparent’s house lost when attacked by Zionist militias in 1948, or documentation and evidence of genocidal acts in Gaza over the past few months, authorized by the Israeli Cabinet,” the letter states.

If this sounds familiar, it should. In 2020, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) launched a global campaign entitled “Facebook, we need to talk” with thirty other organizations to pressure Meta not to categorize critical use of the term “Zionist” as a form of hate speech under its Community Standards. That campaign was prompted by a similar email revelation, and a petition in opposition to the potential policy change garnered over 14,500 signatures within the first twenty-four hours.

In May 2021, Biddle also reported that despite Facebook’s claims that the change was under consideration, the platform and its subsidiary, Instagram, had already been applying the policy to content moderation since at least 2019, eventually leading to an explosive wave of suppression of social media criticism of Israeli violence against Palestinians that included the looming expulsion of Palestinians from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah, Israeli Occupation Forces’ brutalization of Palestinian worshippers in Al Aqsa mosque, and lethal bombardment of the Gaza strip in 2021.

Still Denied: Permission to Narrate

These 2021 waves of anti-Palestinian censorship across digital platforms prompted me to write an op-ed for Al Jazeera. I connected Palestinian History Professor Maha Nassar’s analysis of journalistic output related to Palestine over a fifty-year span to social media giants’ repression of Palestine. What Nassar found—thirty-six years after the late Palestinian intellectual Edward Said declared that Palestinians had been denied “Permission to Narrate”—was that an overabundance of writing about Palestinians in corporate media outlets was belied by how infrequently Palestinians are offered the opportunity to speak fully about their own experiences. I argued that the social media censorship of Palestine was a direct continuation of this journalistic anti-Palestinian racism despite the pretext of and capacity for digital platforms to serve as an immediate and widely accessible corrective to the omissions of corporate media. Palestinians are doubly silenced by social media censorship, once again denied “Permission to Narrate.”

Before, the sole culprit was the corporate media. Today, it’s matched by Silicon Valley.

I identified this phenomenon as “digital apartheid.”

At the time, I assumed this would be a one-off piece. The wide-scale social media censorship of Palestine in 2021 certainly seemed to be an escalation, but it also came on the cusp of what felt like a global narrative shift in the Palestinian struggle. Savvy social media use by Palestinians resisting displacement from Sheikh Jarrah made Palestinian oppression legible in seemingly unprecedented ways, which in turn helped promote increased inclusion of Palestinian voices and perspectives within corporate media outlets such as CNN.

So when Big Tech companies such as Meta tried to backpedal by ramping up censorship as Israel increased its colonial violence, it felt like a desperation born of unsustainability. Yes, Big Tech was erasing Palestinian voices, taking the baton from corporate media in an astoundingly egregious fashion, but this had to be temporary. Surely, the increased support for the Palestinian struggle born of a paradigm-shifting moment would eventually compel social media giants to desist.

To state the obvious, this was not the case, and what I thought would be a one-time topic became the focus of repeated freelance journalistic output. I wrote articles for Mondoweiss and The Electronic Intifada about various forms of digital repression, from blacklisting and harassment by online Zionist outfits such as Stopantisemitism.org and their affiliate social media accounts to deletion and censorship of Palestinian content on platforms like Meta and X (which was still Twitter at the time the bulk of these pieces were written).

It became all too clear that what had at first seemed like an escalation was now routine, as social media giants continued to heavily repress Palestinian voices, often around particular flashpoints such as Israeli bombardments of the Gaza strip—the so-called “mowing of the lawn.” Increasingly impressed by how digital repression of anti-Zionist and pro-Palestine content on social media platforms acts as an extension of Israel’s lethal colonial violence and racism against Palestinians, I started to think that a book about digital repression of Palestine and Palestinians could be a timely contribution to the critical trend towards analysis of how Big Tech reinforces systems of structural oppression. As writers, we approach broad topics with particular fascination, even obsession. Given my own interest in Big Tech’s role in suppressing the very narrative shifts on Palestine it inadvertently served to operationalize, as well as the potential friction between the imperially derived norms of censoriousness that govern corporate media and newer digital platforms, the vast bulk of my work focused on social media.

To be sure, there is no shortage of analysis about tech repression of Palestinians, by writers and academics like Jonathan Cook, Anthony Lowenstein, Mona Shtaya, Nadim Nashif, and Miriyam Auoragh (to name but a few). It is also crucial to center the necessary advocacy by organizations such as the aforementioned 7amleh, which is leading the charge to protect Palestinian digital rights, and the #NoTechforApartheid campaign. But I felt that a book about this topic published in a space not exclusively dedicated to Palestine could accomplish the modest task of helping affirm the relevance of digital repression of Palestinians and their allies to broader conversations about how, for all of its pretensions, Big Tech is a central cog within rather than a corrective to different systems of oppression and extraction. Indeed, as critics of technofeudalism and surveillance capitalism note, Big Tech’s predilection for exploitation arises from how it works within capitalism rather than displacing it outright.

Refusing the Language of Silence

So, on October 13, 2022, I did something that many writers do: I pitched a book of critical essays based on these articles about the digital repression of Palestine to a press. The pitch for Terms of Servitude: Zionism, Silicon Valley, and Digital/Settler-Colonialism in the Palestinian Liberation Struggle was accepted by The Censored Press and its partner, Seven Stories Press, in just over a month’s time.

Then, just a few days shy of one year later, Israel began its current genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

Suddenly, putting words together felt both impossible and vampiric.

How could I think of making language in the face of the unspeakable?

Something in myself closed off. For the next few months, I moved with the sureness of abandonment. I attended demonstrations, co-organized events, planned campaigns, and continued to think of ways to keep Palestine in the classroom. But a book was the last thing on my mind. In fact, for a time, I couldn’t even write at all. Editors commissioned pieces from me, but all I could do was watch the cursor blink as the emails piled up and then stopped altogether after the solicitors finally learned the language of my silence.

The epiphany is a standard (if at times hackneyed) component of narratives. But fiction and experience share a dialectical relationship. Each one helps us make sense of the other.

Several important developments helped inspire a shift in my consciousness.

For one thing, I could never really escape from the task at hand, even as I did my best to hide. Lying in bed with no light but the dim blue glow of the phone to view recordings of atrocity upon atrocity, then digital restriction or outright deletion of the material in question, I realized that I was a near-constant witness to the very dynamics about which I had been trying to avoid writing.

Being asked to give feedback on brilliant writing by comrades in Palestine reminded me that writing and analysis play a particular role in liberation struggles.

I eventually came to realize that in addition to the immeasurable toll of physical destruction and extermination, the Zionist state’s latest genocide of Palestinians in Gaza is intended to inspire fear and surrender. Therefore, it is incumbent upon all people of conscience to use their platforms to advocate for Palestinian liberation and resist genocide. I have always identified as a writer, first and foremost. I realized that Terms of Servitude is a unique platform I have at my disposal to help advance this goal, however modestly.

And lastly, as a vast wave of criminalization of support for Palestine broke out across the United States, digital repression was once more at an all-time high. The egregiousness of Meta’s potential policy change, which prioritizes the protection of a colonial ideology under hate-speech frameworks while colonized Palestinians are undergoing genocide, is sharpened when we consider the ways that the company has already been enabling the Israeli state’s latest genocidal campaign: For instance, as reported by Zeinab Ismail for SMEX, Meta updated its algorithms following October 7 to hide comments from Palestine, ensuring that comments from Palestinians with a minimum 25 percent probability rating for containing “offensive” content were flagged, while the number was set to 80 percent for all other users.

Digital/Settler-Colonialism at Work

After October 7, my previous use of the term digital apartheid no longer felt adequate. Apartheid is one aspect of the Zionist colonization of Palestine, not the totality. Apartheid is an instrument of settler colonialism. Zionist-aligned tech suppression serves to alienate Palestinians from the digital sphere, but simply attributing this discrimination to “apartheid” obscures the full scope of violence that the Zionist enterprise poses to Palestinians. The term settler colonialism incorporates apartheid as part of a broader apparatus of violence, including land theft, elimination, and, as we continue to see play out in real-time, genocide. What Palestinians are up against is not (only) “digital apartheid” but a colonial application of digital technologies.

In 1976, Herbert Schiller explored how communications technologies function as a new weapon of Western imperialism, allowing a specific cadre of US governmental and corporate elites to use the global propagation of broadcast systems and programming as a means of securing US hegemony. Recalling the historical connection between the US government, military, and corporate capitalist interests and the development of the internet, Schiller’s insights are directly applicable to contemporary digital systems.

In 2019, Michael Kwet categorized the actions of Big Tech companies as “digital colonialism.” Using South Africa as a case study, Kwet compared the extractive attitude of tech companies that provided technology and internet access to South African schools for the purposes of enacting surveillance and data mining to the colonial corporatism of the Dutch East India Company. By “digital colonialism,” Kwet was referring to how Big Tech is one contemporary means by which counter-democratic US corporations engage in extractive processes against the rest of the world to shore up profits and ensure their dominance.

Kawsar Ali used the term “digital settler colonialism” to refer to “how the Internet can become a tool to decide who does and does not belong and extend settler violence online and offline” (p8). My framework combines these insights to explain how the digital dimensions of the Palestinian liberation struggle reflect a meeting point of colonial and settler-colonial designs.

I use the term digital/settler-colonialism to categorize this dynamic. I realize the phrase is far from perfect. For one thing, it’s rather indecorous. Frankly, it’s clunky.

Nevertheless, I believe its aesthetic shortcomings are compensated for by analytical precision, for digital/settler-colonialism captures the convergence of US Big Tech digital colonialism and Israeli settler colonialism. In doing so, it foregrounds the aggregate nature of the material conditions opposing Palestinian digital sovereignty.

Imagine a Venn diagram whose two spheres are digital colonialism and settler colonialism. Digital/settler-colonialism is the area formed where the two overlap.

Campaigns such as those opposing Meta’s prohibition on critical use of the term “Zionist” demonstrate the looming threat of digital/settler-colonialism at work. By applying public pressure to discourage tech moguls from implementing terms of service and community guidelines that mirror Israeli colonial and apartheid policy, these campaigns reflect the unique danger posed by corporate digital colonialism coming together with Israeli settler colonialism. But they also demonstrate how resisting digital/settler-colonialism can work by leveraging the potential friction between the imperatives of digital colonialism and settler colonialism. This approach echoes the framework of the Palestinian-led BDS movement, which prioritizes economic and political pressure as a means of ending Israeli colonial impunity and making investment in Israeli apartheid and military occupation too costly.

After all, while US tech companies are no friend to Palestinian liberation (not to mention any other freedom struggle), they’re also not a settler-colonial state dedicated to the elimination of an Indigenous people. They’re corporations driven first and foremost by the pursuit of unrestricted profits.

Granted, Israel has been deeply enmeshed in the tech world even as its tech sector has taken significant hits. The refinement of tech, particularly for purposes of rights deprivation, has granted the colonial state a unique global capital. For instance, though Israel is not a member of the imperialist North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a 2018 arrangement enables Israeli companies to sell weapons to NATO countries vis-à-vis the NATO Support and Procurement Agency. Writing in Electronic Intifada, David Cronin reports that Israeli weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems had procured new deals with NATO member countries since the start of Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, and that NATO itself had expressed considerable interest in increasing collaboration. NATO military committee chair Rob Bauer even voiced admiration for how the IOF’s Gaza division used robotics and AI to monitor what he referred to as “border crossings”—a euphemism, as Cronin rightly notes, for Israel’s corralling of colonized Palestinians into the world’s largest open-air prison and maintaining the inhumane blockade to which it has subjected Gaza since 2007. And despite claims to the contrary, Israel has long deployed Pegasus spyware, used by repressive regimes the world over to target activists and journalists, as a tool of digital diplomacy. Inseparable from Israel’s routinized and continuously refined surveillance of Palestinians, Pegasus has also been used to deliberately target Palestinian activists involved in human rights work. Predictably, NSO Group, the cyber-(in-)security company that developed Pegasus, is capitalizing on Israel’s genocide and engaging in various PR and lobbying efforts to rebrand itself, hoping to overturn the US government’s sanctioning of its product.

The central role tech plays in Israel’s competitive status and reputation is also bolstered by how, for all of their bluster about supporting free speech, Big Tech companies generally have a habit of maintaining cozy relationships with oppressive regimes. For all of these reasons, the overlap between Israeli colonial designs and Big Tech operations can be considerable. For example, as Paul Biggar observes regarding Meta, the company’s three most senior leaders have pronounced connections to the Israeli state. Guy Rosen, the Chief Information Security Officer who Biggar identifies as the “person most associated” with Meta’s “anti-‘anti-Zionism’” policies, is Israeli, lives in Tel Aviv, and served in the IOF’s infamous Unit 8200. Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg gave $125,000 to ZAKA, one of the organizations that fabricated and continues to spread the October 7 “mass rape” hoax. Sheryl Sandberg, former COO and current Meta board member, has been on tour spreading the very same propaganda. Biggar argues that these ties help explain the ease with which the IOF seems able to access WhatsApp metadata to slaughter Palestinians in Gaza indiscriminately.

But a convergence model is helpful in two respects. First, it helps recenter complicity—tech companies don’t have to facilitate Israel’s settler colonialism; to do so is an active choice on their part. Furthermore, maximum profit and the genocide of Palestinians are two separate goals, even as they can often overlap through the economic incentivization of imperialist militarism. Thus, at least in theory, it is possible to undermine digital/settler-colonialism by refining the potential instability between digital colonialism and settler colonialism by making the operation of the former process too costly when it facilitates the latter.

Resisting Digital/Settler-Colonialism

Social media has taken on an even more outsized role in this latest iteration of Zionist genocide. Palestinian journalists from Gaza use it to document genocide in real-time—even as they are directly targeted by Israel and subjected to frequent communications blackouts. Younger generations use it to find and share information about Palestine that is otherwise hidden by the corporate media. And, recalling Franz Fanon’s analysis of how the Algerian Liberation Front repurposed the radio, which began as an instrument of French colonial domination, in order to affirm dedication to the Algerian revolution, Palestinian, Lebanese, and Yemeni resistance fighters use social media to strike a powerful blow to the image of Israeli and US military impunity.

Of course, consciousness-raising has its limits. Western governments remain unwilling to meaningfully reverse support for Israel despite a vast trove of digital and analog documentation (not to mention the recent ruling by the International Court of Justice). This reflects the degree to which these governments’ functioning is predicated upon the dehumanization of Palestinians, an awareness powerfully captured by Steven Salaita’s description of “scrolling through genocide.”

But the reconfiguration of the conventions and possibilities of communication posed by Big Tech hegemony means that digital spaces remain a central avenue of global interconnection. As such, Palestinian access to social media and the internet continues to be obstructed by the powerful. And resisting digital/setter-colonialism in pursuit of Palestinian liberation remains a paramount undertaking.

First published at Project Censored.

Omar Zahzah is a writer, poet, organizer, and Assistant Professor of Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas (AMED) Studies at San Francisco State University. Omar’s book, Terms of Servitude: Zionism, Silicon Valley, and Digital/Settler-Colonialism in the Palestinian Liberation Struggle, is forthcoming from The Censored Press, in partnership with Seven Stories Press, in fall 2025. Read other articles by Omar.

Edward Said’s Orientalism and Its Afterlives


Edward Said’s Orientalism instilled an anti-imperial sensibility into an entire generation of Western scholars. But even while it castigated the imperial project, its actual analysis didn’t give us the intellectual resources to overturn it.

A painting by Henry Martens portraying the battle of Ferozeshah in the First Anglo-Sikh War, which resulted in defeat and partial subjugation of the Sikh empire to the British. (Wikimedia Commons)

LONG READ

BYVIVEK CHIBBER

JACOBIN
12.24.2021
This article is reprinted from Catalyst: A Journal of Theory and Strategy, a publication from the Jacobin Foundation. 

Few works have had a greater influence on the current left than Edward Said’s Orientalism. In the first instance, it has become the lodestone for critical scholarship around the colonial experience and imperialism. But more expansively, in its status as a founding text of postcolonial studies, its imprint can be discerned across the moral sciences — in race studies, history, cultural theory, and even political economy. Indeed, it is hard to think of many books that have had a greater influence on critical scholarship over the past half century. There are some respects in which Said’s placement of colonialism at the center of the modern era has had a salutary effect, not just on scholarship, but also on politics. Even as the Left went into retreat in the neoliberal era, even as working-class parties either shrank in influence or were absorbed into the mainstream, the centrality of anti-imperialism surprisingly remained close to the center of left discourse — an achievement in no small part attributable to Said’s great book. And even as class politics is reemerging after its long hiatus, it is impossible to imagine a future in which the Left in the core countries will ever repeat its sometimes baleful disregard for imperial aggression and for the aspirations of laboring classes in the Global South. In this recalibration of the Left’s moral compass, Said’s Orientalism continues to play an important role.


Precisely because of its classic status, and its continuing influence, Orientalism deserves a careful reexamination. Its importance as a moral anchor for the anti-imperialist Left has to be balanced against some of the other, less auspicious aspects of its legacy. In particular, alongside its excoriation of Western colonialism and its deep investigation of colonialism’s ideological carapace, the book undeniably took several steps backward in the analysis of colonial expansion. It was this very weakness that proved to be so attractive to the emerging field of postcolonial studies in the 1980s, and that enabled its proponents to don the mantle of anti-imperial critique even as they were engaging in the very essentialism and exoticization of the East that was emblematic of colonial ideology. It is no small irony that Said, a deeply committed humanist, secularist, and cosmopolitan, is now associated with an intellectual trend that traduces those very values. This apparent paradox, I will argue, is, in fact, not so mysterious. It reflects real weaknesses in Orientalism’s basic arguments — weaknesses that were exposed very early by critics from the South but that were brushed aside by the New Left in its flight from materialism. As the Left gathers its intellectual resources once again and takes up the challenge of confronting imperial power, an engagement with Orientalism has to be high on its agenda.

Orientalism as Cause and Effect

There are two arguments in Orientalism about the relation between Western imperialism and its accompanying discourse. The first, and the one that has emerged as a kind of folk conception of the phenomenon, describes Orientalism as a rationalization for colonial rule. Said dates this Orientalism to the eighteenth century, with the rise of what is now called the Second British Empire, and continuing into the Cold War, when the United States displaced Britain as the global hegemon. It was during these centuries that Orientalism flourished as a body of knowledge that not only described and systematized how the East was understood but did so in a fashion that justified its domination by the West. Hence, if nationalists demanded the right to self-governance by Asians, or criticized the racism of colonial regimes, defenders schooled in Orientalism could retort

that Orientals have never understood the meaning of self-government the way “we” do. When some Orientals oppose racial discrimination while others practice it, you say “they’re all Orientals at bottom” and class interest, political circumstances, economic factors are totally irrelevant. . . . History, politics, and economics do not matter. Islam is Islam, the Orient is the Orient, and please take all your ideas about a left and a right wing, revolutions, and change back to Disneyland.

In other words, the normal grounds of political judgment did not apply to colonial settings because, in relying on them, colonial critics presumed that Eastern peoples were motivated by the same needs and goals as those of the West. But this, Orientalism advised, was a fallacy. Asians did not think in terms of self-determination, or class, or their economic interests. To object to colonialism on the grounds that it rode roughshod over these needs or, more ambitiously, to generate a system of rights based on the presumptive universality of those needs, was to ignore the distinctiveness of Eastern culture. It was based on a categorical mistake, and indeed, it could even be criticized as an insensitivity to their cultural specificity. In so conceptualizing the colonial subject as the quintessential Other, Orientalism absolved imperialism of any wrongdoing, and thereby stripped demands for self-determination of any moral authority. Said’s argument here is a fairly traditional, materialist explanation for how and why Orientalist ideology came to occupy such a prominent place in European culture in the modern period. Just as any system of domination creates an ideological discourse to justify and naturalize its superordinate position, so, too, colonialism created a legitimizing discourse of its own. The key here is that the causal arrow runs from imperial domination to the discourse it created — simply put, colonialism created Orientalism.Orientalism’s importance as a moral anchor for the anti-imperialist Left has to be balanced against other, less auspicious aspects of its legacy.

This is undoubtedly the argument for which Orientalism is best known. But it is also the component of Said’s argument that is the most conventional and familiar. Said was not, by any means, the first anti-imperialist to describe modern Orientalism as being tied to the colonial project. Or, to put it more broadly, he was not the first to show that much of the social scientific and cultural scholarship produced by colonial powers was, in fact, geared toward justifying their rule over Eastern nations. As Said himself noted, albeit somewhat belatedly, his book was preceded by scores of works that made the same argument, from scholars belonging to the postcolonial world. Many, if not most, belonged to the Marxist tradition in some degree of proximity. What set Said’s great book apart, then, was not the argument he made, but the erudition and literary quality he brought to it. For even while others had made claims that were identical to his, no one had made them with the same panache and, hence, to the same effect.

But Said also makes another argument, running through the entirety of his great work, that reverses this causal arrow and that takes the argument in an entirely novel direction. In this version, Orientalism was not a consequence of colonialism but one of its causes — “To say simply that Orientalism was a rationalization of colonial rule,” Said avers, “is to ignore the extent to which colonial rule was justified in advance by Orientalism, rather than after the fact.” In other words, Orientalism was around far before the modern era, and by virtue of its depiction of the East, it created the cultural conditions for the West to embark on its colonial project. That depiction had, at its core, the urge to categorize, schematize, and exoticize the East, viewing it as mysterious and fixed, in contrast to the familiar and dynamic West. Hence, the West was ordained the center of moral and scientific progress, and the exotic and unchanging East was an object to be studied and apprehended, but always alien, always distant.

Said traces this tendency back to the classical world, continuing through the medieval period, and culminating in the great works of the Renaissance and after. This implies that Orientalism is not so much a product of circumstances specific to a historical conjuncture, but rather something embedded deeply in Western culture itself. To push this argument, Said makes a distinction between latent and manifest Orientalism. The latent components are its essential core, its basic moral and conceptual architecture, which have been in place since Homer, and which define it as a discourse. Its manifest elements are what give Orientalism its form in any particular era and hence are the components that undergo change in the course of history. Manifest Orientalism organizes the basic, underlying bits comprising latent Orientalism into a coherent doctrine, and its most coherent incarnation is, of course, the one synthesized in the modern era.

This distinction enables Said to accommodate the obvious fact that, as a discourse, Orientalism has not remained unchanged across space and time. He readily admits that Western conceptions of the East have undergone innumerable transformations in form and content over the centuries. Still, “whatever change occurs in knowledge of the Orient is found almost exclusively in manifest Orientalism.” In other words, the changes have only been in the way Orientalism’s essential principles are expressed, their essence remaining more or less the same across the centuries. Said continues, “the unanimity, stability, and durability of latent Orientalism are more or less constant [over time].”

It is not just that latent Orientalism imbricates itself into the pores of Western culture. It is also that, once embedded so securely, it goes beyond simple bias to becoming a practical orientation — an urge to bring reality in line with its conception of how the world ought to be. To Said, this practical stance has been a defining characteristic of the Orientalist mindset, from antiquity to the modern era, in spite of all the changes that it experienced across time. This has enormous consequences for the fate of East-West relations. Said poses the following question: Once the world is carved up analytically the way Orientalism enjoins us to, “can one . . . survive the consequences humanly? [Is there] any way of avoiding the hostility expressed by the division, say, of men into ‘us’ (Westerners) and ‘they’ (Orientals)”? The question is rhetorical, of course, because for Said, the answer is obviously in the negative. The hostility bred by latent Orientalism is passed on from one generation to another as a pillar of Western culture, always viewing the East as inferior. And, as it becomes internalized and fixed as a cultural orientation, the urge to improve the natives, to help them clamber up the civilizational hierarchy, becomes irresistible. It slowly generates a momentum toward a transition from gaining knowledge about the Orient to the more ambitious project of acquiring power over it. Said’s own description of this process is worth quoting:

Transmitted from one generation to another, it [latent Orientalism] was a part of the culture, as much a language about a part of reality as geometry or physics. Orientalism staked its existence, not upon its openness, its receptivity to the Orient, but rather on its internal, repetitious consistency about its constitutive will-to-power over the Orient.

Latent Orientalism came packaged as a “will to power” — this was the practical orientation it embodied. Hence the obsessive accumulation of facts, Said suggests, “made Orientalism fatally tend towards the systematic accumulation of human beings and territories.”

Notice that this version of his argument just about completely inverts the first, materialist one — instead of a system of domination creating its justifying ideology, it is the latter that generates the former: an ideology now creates the power relations it justifies. One is not sure how far Said wishes to press this point — whether he takes Orientalism to be merely an enabling condition for colonialism’s rise, as against a stronger, more propulsive role. I will consider the merits of both interpretations later in this essay. But it seems clear that, on this second argument, Said views Orientalism as in some way responsible for the rise of European colonialism, not just as its consequence.

Now, this argument, unlike the first, does add considerable novelty to the critique of Orientalism. As Fred Halliday observed in a discussion of the book, critiques of Orientalist constructions had typically been materialist in their approach and grounded in political economy; Said’s originality derived in his formulation of an argument that gave a nod to this older approach, but then veered decisively away from it, offering what was an unmistakably culturalist alternative. Hence, “while much of the other work was framed in broadly Marxist terms and was a universalist critique, Said, eschewing materialist analysis, sought to apply literary critical methodology and to offer an analysis specific to something called ‘the Orient.’” It is to this innovation that we now turn.

SEPOY REBELLION INDIA 1857

Two Early Critics

Said’s second argument attracted some attention in the early years after Orientalism appeared, most pointedly in Sadik Jalal al-Azm’s biting critique in Khamsin, and then in Aijaz Ahmad’s broadside in his book In Theory. As al-Azm correctly observed, Said’s second argument was not only in tension with, but also fatally undermined, his objective of criticizing Orientalist views of modern history. For to say, as Said did, that Orientalism had been the defining element in the Western constructions of the East, without attributing it to any social or institutional matrix, strongly suggested that Orientalism was in some way part of the enduring cognitive apparatus of the West. It led inexorably to the conclusion, al-Azm suggested, that “Orientalism is not really a thoroughly modern phenomenon . . . but is the natural product of an ancient and almost irresistible European bent of mind to misrepresent the realities of other cultures, peoples, and their languages, in favour of Occidental self-affirmation.” But if this is what Said was saying, then did it not resurrect the very Orientalism he disavowed? A defining characteristic of this worldview, after all, was the idea of an ontological chasm separating East and West, which the fields, categories, and theories emanating from the West could not traverse. The Western mind, in other words, was not capable of apprehending the true nature of Eastern culture. Said’s implantation of Orientalist discourse as an unchanging component of Western culture seemed to reinforce this very idea — of the inscrutability of the Orient to Western eyes, from the Greeks to Henry Kissinger.

The same questions about Said’s second argument were raised by Aijaz Ahmad in a landmark assessment of his broader oeuvre, published almost a decade after al-Azm’s review. Ahmad speculated that Said’s second rendering of the connection between Orientalism and colonialism was perhaps attributable to the influence of Michel Foucault, though for Ahmad, it was questionable whether Foucault would have supported the idea of a putative continuity in Western discourse from Homer to Richard Nixon. The critical problem for Ahmad, however, was not Said’s fidelity to Foucault, but the theoretical and political consequences of locating Orientalism in the deep recesses of Western culture rather than among the consequences of colonialism. Ahmad raised two issues in particular.Said views Orientalism as in some way responsible for the rise of European colonialism, not just as its consequence.

First, Said seemed to take the Orientalist mindset to be so pervasive in scope and so powerful in influence that the possibility of escaping its grip appeared exceedingly remote. Hence, even thinkers known to be fierce critics of British colonialism are blandly assimilated into the rogues’ gallery of European Orientalists. The most prominent figure in this regard is Karl Marx, who Said relegates to this ignominious status with only the flimsiest of explanations. Ahmad’s foregrounding of this issue was surely justified, given the leading role that Marx and his followers had played not only in criticizing the racism of colonial apologists, but also in anti-colonial movements — from Ireland to India, and from Tanzania to Said’s own homeland of Palestine. Ahmad pointed out, again correctly, that the very passages Said singled out as instances of cultural parochialism could easily be read in a very different vein, as describing not the superiority of Western culture but the brutality of colonial rule. In any case, regardless of one’s judgment about Marx, what was at issue here was whether Said could justifiably claim that Orientalism not only stretched back to classical Greece but exercised such power as to absorb even its critics.

Further, Ahmad pointed to a second, equally important implication of the analysis. Said’s argument, as well as his vocabulary, pushed strongly to displace the traditional interest-based explanations for colonialism, and toward one relying on civilizational clashes. Conventional accounts of colonial expansion had typically adverted to the role of interest groups, classes, and state managers as its animating force. For Marxists, it had been capitalists; for nationalists, it had been “British interests”; for liberals, it was overly ambitious political leaders. What all these explanations had in common was the central role that they accorded to material interests as the motivating factor in colonial rule. But if, in fact, Orientalism as a body of thought propels its believers toward the accumulation of territories, then it is not interests that drive the project, but a deeply rooted cultural disposition — a discourse, to put it in contemporary jargon. As Ahmad concludes:

This idea of constituting Identity through Difference points, again, not to the realm of political economy . . . wherein colonization may be seen as a process of capitalist accumulation but to a necessity which arises within discourse and has always been there at the origin of discourse, so that not only is the modern Orientalist presumably already there in Dante and Euripedes but modern imperialism itself appears to be an effect that arises, as if naturally, from the necessary practices of discourse.

Ahmad is registering his agreement with al-Azm’s judgment that Said has reversed the causal arrow that normally went from colonialism to Orientalism. Naturally, this means that the study of this phenomenon moves from the ambit of political economy to cultural history. But it is not just that colonial expansion appears to be an artifact of discourse. The dispositions it comprises are placed by him not in a particular region or historical era but in an undifferentiated entity called “the West,” stretching back two millennia. This is, of course, a classically Orientalist assertion on Said’s part, but its implications for the study of colonialism are profound. For colonialism now appears not as the consequence of developments particular to a certain era but as an expression of a deeper ontological divide between East and West, a symptom of the cultural orientation of Europe’s inhabitants. We have gone from the culprit being British capitalists to its being “the West” — from classes to cultures.

Said never addressed either al-Azm or Ahmad’s criticisms — a shame, because they remain among the most important and devastating engagements with his work to date. In a private exchange with al-Azm, he promised to reply at some length, and indeed to dismantle al-Azm’s entire examination point by point. (Said warned al-Azm, “I don’t think you’ve ever tangled with a polemicist of my sort. . . . I propose to teach you a lesson in how to argue and how to make points.”) But he never delivered on that promise, nor did he respond in print to Ahmad’s critique. (The latter was met with aggressively ad hominem arguments by Said’s followers.) In the rest of this essay, I purpose to build upon those early interventions to push further in the same direction. Ahmad and al-Azm were justified in their observation that Said’s argument had turned the corner from materialist critique of ideology to idealist argument. But while their accusation was correct, their justification of it was not fully developed — perhaps because they took the weakness of idealist Said’s argument for granted. In today’s context, however, it is important to further develop the line of argument they opened up, and to demonstrate why Said’s view is wrong by virtue of its idealism.

The crux of what I wish to argue is that Said’s second argument — that colonialism was a consequence of Orientalism, not its cause — was not only disturbing in its implications but also that it could not possibly be right, on Said’s own admission. In other words, what al-Azm and Ahmad failed to observe was that the second argument was contradicted by Said’s own evidence. Orientalism could not have generated modern colonialism, or even contributed to it in any significant way. Its roots, therefore, have to be sought in political economy, not in European culture — much as materialists had argued for decades.

SEPOY REBELLION INDIA 1857

Culture and Colonialism

Said is correct in his observation that ethnocentric and essentializing depictions of the East were widespread among European observers from the earliest times. The question is what explanatory role such depictions are accorded in the rise of European colonialism. We have seen in the preceding section that Said clearly assigns considerable importance to them in this regard. Just what the causal chain is that connects them to it, and how important they are compared to other factors, is murky. But we can be confident that the role is important, since he never qualifies it, nor feels compelled to embed it in a wider discussion of how it combined with other forces that pushed Britain and France outward in the modern era. The problem with Said’s view is that, in his own description of the content of Orientalism, and in his empirical discussion of its relation to other cultures’ own discourses about the West, the argument for its importance as a factor in the advent of modern colonialism breaks down. And, by extension, the promotion of culture as a central explanatory factor in the latter process must also be demoted.

The central problem Said must contend with is that there was nothing unique in the West’s highly parochial understanding of the Orient. The same essentialized and ethnocentric conceptions were typical of Eastern understandings of the West. Hence, the texts we have from Arab, Persian, and Indian descriptions of European culture from precolonial times are no less parochial in their descriptions of Europe and its people, and no less prone to generalize across time and space. Indeed, it is hard to imagine any description of a culture that can escape the tendency to categorize, to generalize across cases, and to schematize in some way or form. The fact is that aspects of Western scholarship of the East that Said takes to be Orientalist are found in many instances of cross-cultural observation.

Said, of course, knows this and readily admits to it. Hence, he observes,

One ought again to remember that all cultures impose corrections upon raw reality, changing it from free-floating objects into units of knowledge. The problem is not that conversion takes place. It is perfectly natural for the human mind to resist the assault on it of untreated strangeness; therefore cultures have always been inclined to impose complete transformations on other cultures, receiving these other cultures not as they are but as, for the benefit of the receiver, they ought to be.

But this admission raises a fundamental problem for Said’s insistence that Orientalism was in some way responsible for modern imperialism. For if the urge to categorize, essentialize, and generalize about other cultures — which Said insists is what Orientalism does — is common to allcultures, then how can it explain the rise of modern colonialism, which is a project specific to particular nations? In other words, if this mindset was common to many cultures, then it cannot have been what generated colonialism, since the latter was particular to a few nations in (mostly) Western Europe.We have gone from the culprit being British capitalists to its being ‘the West’ — from classes to cultures.

One way to save Said’s second argument would be to weaken the claim for its causal role. As I suggested in the preceding section, because of Said’s ambiguity regarding its status, there are a variety of ways that we could construe his claim. At the very least, we can distinguish between a strong version of it and a weak one:
Strong version: Latent Orientalism was sufficient to launch colonialism. On this account, the motivational push coming from cultural essentialism was all that was needed to launch a colonial project. No other preconditions were necessary.
Weak version: Latent Orientalism was necessary, but not sufficient to launch colonialism. In this account, the racism associated with latent Orientalism was an indispensable precondition for colonialism, but it needed other factors to also be present — perhaps political and economic ones. Nonetheless, the latter could not have been effective had the Orientalist mindset not been gestating.

The strong version proposes that once the Orientalist mindset was in place, it could, on its own, generate modern colonialism. In this view, no other contributing factor was needed to bring about the result. Hence, it would predict that any country that viewed other cultures through this prism would embark on colonial expansion. Clearly, this view is contradicted by the observation that the number of countries with an “Orientalist” mindset (as described above) far exceeded the number that embarked on colonial expansion — so the strong version of this argument cannot be sustained.

A second strategy to save Said’s second argument would be to resort to its weak version. The burden here would be to propose that even if latent Orientalism could not, by itself, generate colonialism, it was nonetheless an essential part of the combination of factors that did bring it about. Hence it was still necessary, even though it wasn’t sufficient, and even though it had to act in tandem with other factors. (It would be what John Mackie referred to as an INUS condition: a necessary but insufficient component of an unnecessary but sufficient causal complex.) Thus, it might be that economic interest or political ambitions were also critical in generating the British or French thrust into the Middle East. The search for oil, the desire to find new markets, the need to secure geopolitical advantage by capturing key ports — all these might have been critical motivating factors for the European powers. The weaker argument would be able to accommodate all these into an explanation for the rise of modern imperialism. It would not have to claim that racial prejudice alone was what drove the Europeans outward, but it could still insist that these other factors would not have been sufficient for the outcome on their own. Without the mindset created by the already existing latent Orientalism, the other factors might have remained inert, unable to muster the force needed to launch the project.

This would probably be the commonsensical defense of Said’s argument, and it is certainly the most effective. But while it has a surface appeal, this version also fails for two reasons. The first has to do with the internal structure of the argument. Nobody doubts that factors like economic or political motivation had to play a role in colonialism’s rise. In that sense, the place of the broader causal complex is secure. The question is, once the economic motivation is in place, will its proponents also require the psychological orientation generated by Orientalism to undertake the colonial project? It might seem that the answer is an obvious yes, because it could be claimed that a process as brutal and costly as colonialism could not be undertaken without some moral or ethical justification — not just for the wider public but for its practitioners. Moral agents could not engage in oppressive practices, they could not terrorize other human beings, unless they believed that the endeavor served a higher purpose. And this is what Orientalism provided them, with its claims to civilize and educate the natives. The ethnic and racial domination implied by modern colonialism would thus be perceived by its progenitors as a moral undertaking, not just as the naked pursuit of power and profit. This is the sense in which Orientalism might be suggested to be necessary, albeit insufficient, as a causal factor in the expansion of European rule.

But what this argument would overlook is that it is not the rationalizing function of Orientalism that is in question, but the need for it to be already present in European culture at the inception of the imperial project. Thus, materialist arguments could easily allow that an economically motivated project is greatly facilitated by a discourse that rationalizes the project on moral grounds. But they would deny the stronger proposition that, had the discourse not been in place, the project would have stalled or failed to be launched. This is so because, once the economic interest is in place, there is an endogenously generated pressure to create a justifying discourse for the project, even where such a discourse does not already exist. Dominant agents are not impeded by the fact they do not have, ready at hand, a rationalizing ideology. Where it does not exist, they cobble one together. This is, after all, the main function of intellectuals — to serve ruling groups by crafting an ideology that justifies their dominance on moral grounds. Thus, the absence of such a discourse at the project’s inception cannot be deemed an obstacle to its launch.

But this is exactly what is implied in Said’s claim that latent imperialism was in some way responsible for the modern colonial project. For even the weak version of his second argument to succeed, it has to establish that, had British and French elites not had the intellectual resources of Orientalism already available to them, this absence would have been an obstacle to their colonial project. Without this claim, the second argument collapses into a materialist one. If Said were to agree that, even if Orientalism had not been available as an academic discipline, even if latent Orientalism had been absent from the scene, its basic elements could have nonetheless been crafted ex nihilo in order to justify colonial rule — then he would be suggesting that latent Orientalism was not, in fact, a necessary part of the causal complex that brought about colonialism. If it is conceded that colonial elites were capable of generating their own rationalizing discourse, then latent Orientalism fails even as a necessary component of the forces behind colonialism. We are now back to the materialist argument that ruling classes create the ideology needed for their reproduction, and not the other way around.

Hence, Said’s second argument cannot be sustained, even in its weak form. Once it is admitted that essentializing descriptions of other cultures were common across East and West, and once we recognize that other motivations were enough to propel states outward, then it cannot be maintained that the mindset created by these descriptions was in any way responsible for the colonial project. What was, in fact, responsible was what Marxists and progressive nationalists had been suggesting for a century prior to the publication of Orientalism: the material interests and capacities of particular social formations in the West. It is to Said’s credit that he acknowledges the fact of cross-cultural parochialism, but it’s quite astonishing that he is unaware of how devastating the admission is to his argument. The admission injects a deep and unresolvable contradiction in one of his fundamental claims. Once this part of his book is rejected, as it should be, what remains standing is his first argument: that the basic function of Orientalism was to serve as the justification of colonial rule — as its consequence, not its cause.

SEPOY REBELLION INDIA 1857

Legacy

Said never addressed the ambiguity in his book regarding the relationship between Orientalist discourse and the colonial project — in chief, the copresence of two diametrically opposed enunciations of that relationship. But, in many ways, that very ambiguity played a role in the easy assimilation of Orientalism into the broader shifts underway around the time of its publication. The early 1980s were when critical intellectuals ceased to be enamored of Marx and Marxist theory, turning to the warm embrace of post-structuralism and, soon thereafter, postcolonial theory. In this context, Said’s incipient culturalism, his nod to the potentially primary role of ideas and discourse in the initiation of colonialism, folded seamlessly into the shifts that were occurring in the scholarly world. His explicit overtures to Foucault, and his adoption of some of the latter’s conceptual vocabulary, packaged the book in a fashion that made it easily digestible, even familiar. Substantively, the culturalism of his second argument — which elicited censure from Marxists like al-Azm and Ahmad — barely raised an eyebrow in the wider firmament, because this was the very direction in which critical theory was evolving. Indeed, the reaction from broader circles was directed not at Said but at Ahmad, whose important critique of Said was met with a campaign so vicious and personalized that it is jarring to revisit it even a quarter century later.

The second aspect of Said’s book that ensured its warm reception had to do with his treatment of Marx. Said did not just present his book as a scholarly work on colonial ideology, but as a representative of the anti-colonial tradition. It was packaged as a work of critical theory — deeply erudite, intensely scholarly, but never neutral. In this respect, it was intended to be part of the anti-colonial tradition associated with the global left in the twentieth century. But as Said well knew, that tradition had been led by, and associated with, Marxist and socialist theory since the late nineteenth century. Even mainstream nationalists drew on the theories and political ambitions of the Marxist left, from India and China to South Africa and Peru. The only political currents that were explicitly hostile to that tradition were those associated with conservative nationalists and religious groups. For a century prior to the publication of Orientalism, the progressive critique of colonialism had always orbited around, and drawn upon, Marxism.The basic function of Orientalism was to serve as the justification of colonial rule — as its consequence, not its cause.

Said’s innovation was to be the most significant intellectual who claimed the mantle of radical anti-colonialism, while also denouncing Marx as a purveyor of alien and highly parochial values and analysis. This was significant in several respects. First and foremost, for the rapidly professionalizing New Left — now tenured and looking for acceptance in the American academy — it provided an ideal instrument to distance themselves from Marxist theory while still identifying as radicals. It was now possible to reinvent colonial critique so that it defended the idea of self-determination while eschewing any association with socialist or Marxist ideas. Indeed, the preferred motif now became criticizing the Marxist legacy as not radical enough — hence outflanking it rhetorically from the left.

These strategies were neatly exemplified in an influential series of essays on Marxism and colonial critique by the Indian historian Gyan Prakash. Writing in the early 1990s, when Said’s influence was well established, Prakash upheld the banner of anti-colonialism, calling for a root and branch excision of Orientalism from colonial historiography — in which one of the main targets turned out to be Marx and his followers. What was significant here was not just the novelty of turning Marx into a proponent of the “colonial gaze” (to use a bit of postcolonial jargon) but, equally, for Prakash to draw explicitly on Said, on Orientalism, and to drape his argument in that book’s conceptual vocabulary. This strategy was soon just about ubiquitous in all the fields in which area studies played any significant role, so that by the second decade of this century, it was taken for granted that the only way in which Marxist theory could have anything to offer in colonial critique was if somehow it could be rid of its Western bias and its putative endorsement of colonialism — for which Said’s work was, and still is, taken to be the remedy.

Second, a central implication of Said’s description of Marx as an Orientalist was that the analytical categories associated with him were similarly demoted. It had been common, even typical, in the critical anti-colonial tradition to approach the subject through the prism of political economy — even if the analyst did not mobilize its categories, the deep and enduring relation between colonial expansion and capitalist motives was at least assumed, if not highlighted. But in a book devoted to the explication of colonial ideology, and to the connection between that ideology and the colonial project, Said studiously distances himself from any reference to capitalism. Neither the word nor even its cognates makes an appearance in Orientalism, except in reference to others’ works or in irony. The entire issue is presented and analyzed through the framework of cultural analysis, in which the thinker who receives a positive endorsement is not Marx — nor Vladimir Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg, who wrote the two most influential analyses of imperialism in the twentieth century — but Foucault.

What made the marginalization of political economy all the more significant was the framework Said seemed to offer in its place. At the core of the traditional materialist understanding of colonialism was the analysis of capitalism and the wider theory bound up with it — the manner in which class interests shaped imperialism, the relation of laboring classes to it, the question of whether and how much they might have benefited from it, the mechanisms by which local elite interests were harnessed to the project, and, of course, the role of the state. But few of these concerns make their way into Said’s framework. The categories that drive his analysis are civilizational and geographical: East and West, Orient and Occident. Capitalists and workers, peasants and landlords — the normal concepts of political analysis — are displaced by the very categories that Said ought to have been anxious to set aside. Rather than interests, what motivates colonialists is the West’s “will to power,” a concept that is connected to interests only semantically, if at all.

The evacuation of materialist categories, the turn to culturalism, the positing of what appears to be a cognitive divide between West and East, the pillorying of Marx as another in a long line of European Orientalists — all these elements in Said’s great work were entirely in line with the evolution of critical scholarship in the era of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. As social theory went from materialist to culturalist, and from culturalist to postcolonial, overtures to Orientalism remained a fixture throughout. And Said, a humanist and lifelong critic of cultural essentialisms, became associated with an intellectual turn that has resurrected the very Orientalist tropes he spent much of his career trying to undermine. Said was apparently never entirely at ease with this circumstance, as Timothy Brennan has observed. But Said did little to overturn it, and far less to resist it. For better or worse, he not only tolerated but presided over his enshrinement as one of the foundational thinkers of the postcolonial turn.

For those who seek a return to the materialist roots of the anti-colonial tradition in scholarship, the dimensions of Said’s great work that I have highlighted — his second argument, the essentialism it entailed, the demotion of political economy, and the positing of an East-West dichotomy — will have to be set aside. This means that one of the tasks is to revive the critical approach endorsed by scholars such as al-Azm and Ahmad, against the mountainous and deplorable calumny to which they have been subjected. Most of all, it will mean placing the questions of class and capitalism back at the center of political and historical analysis of colonialism — and of the postcolonial states that followed in its wake. This does not, by any means, entail a rejection of Orientalism itself. The materialist core of Said’s work remains valid, untouched by the infirmities of his “Orientalism in reverse,” as al-Azm correctly described his second argument. It still offers an imposing edifice upon which the anti-colonial tradition can build. It is just that this dimension of Said’s great work will have to be embedded in an analytical framework that draws upon, and returns to, those categories that are missing from Orientalism, and that postcolonial theory has worked for more than a generation to either bury or forget — back to political economy, for which, even today, Marx remains the indispensable starting point.

Republished from Catalyst: A Journal of Theory and Strategy.

Vivek Chibber is a professor of sociology at New York University. He is the editor of Catalyst: A Journal of Theory and Strategy.

The Sepoy Rebellion — Forgotten History
https://www.forgottenhistory.me/war/the-sepoy-rebellion
2019-06-07 · Jun 7 The Sepoy Rebellion. Matthew Jarrett. Going by many names such as The Sepoy Rebellion, The Sepoy Mutiny, The Indian Mutiny and in India is known as the First War of Independence, the war that saw a dramatic shift in British rule in India has a long and storied history. While ultimately unsuccessful it proved to the British that India would require more …

Indian Rebellion of 1857 - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Rebellion_of_1857
Overview
East India Company's expansion in India
Causes of the rebellion
Onset of the rebellion
Supporters and opposition
The revolt
Consequences
Nomenclature


The Indian Rebellion of 1857 was a major uprising in India in 1857–58 against the rule of the British East India Company, which functioned as a sovereign power on behalf of the British Crown. The rebellion began on 10 May 1857 in the form of a mutiny of sepoys of the Company's army in the garrison town of Meerut, 40 mi (64 km) northeast of Delhi. It then erupted into other mutinies and civilia…