#it glosses right over the crucial 'systems of rapacious cruelty are bad IN THEIR OWN RIGHT BECAUSE BROWN PEOPLE ARE HUMAN' bit

[chamerionwrites]

Aimé Césaire saying that colonization works to decivilize the colonizer truly lives in my head rent-free

#this is the essence of the v problematic anticolonial critique in so much 19thc literature (eg heart of darkness) right? #(and also its more modern inheritors eg apocalypse now and the Doing An Imperialism Makes Our Soldiers Sad genre of war story) #it glosses right over the crucial 'systems of rapacious cruelty are bad IN THEIR OWN RIGHT BECAUSE BROWN PEOPLE ARE HUMAN' bit #but in that one limited sense - that cruelty also brutalizes the perpetrators - it is very much the same critique #anyway i guess my brain continues to find ways to circle back round to discourse on colonialism no matter the initial topic #lit tag #no more war #imperialism #imperial violence always comes home #cultures of dissociation #aimé césaire #i am also choosing to tag this #sherlock holmes #as like solidly 98% of the stories in which the murderer is a former colonial officer or official are ROILING w this exact anxiety #(especially the hella racist ones. lol.) #i mean loads of authors in that time period are doing it but i have a tag for acd so. #my posts