(Post/Neo) Colonial (Lack of) Guilt

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
you mean the subaltern

yeah. basically fanon - the father of postcolonialism - filtered through the prism of foucault. it literally means exclusion from global power structures; I've also heard it defined as that which does not act but is acted upon (in an existential sense). having to adopt a colonial mode of thought + discourse is a point fanon was very big on, i.e. black skin white masks. chinua achebe, a contemporary of fanon, also addresses it - brilliantly - in no longer at ease (the sequel to things fall apart). + achebe's searing takedown of the heart of darkness is pretty much a required postcolonial text, up there w/fanon + orientalism. tho i'm really not an expert, i've just dabbled a bit.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
reckon it's very important to acknowledge the existence of tribal tensions + other things that predate the arrival of europeans. to not do so perpetuates the noble savage myth, for one. history is complicated. it rejects simple narratives. the inca + aztecs were both imperialist empires in their own right. so were the zulus. shit, so were the vikings. many, many peoples kept slaves before the middle passage. it's not as if any of that nullifies the catastrophic effects of european colonialism. taking advantage of + exacerbating those things to divide + conquer was a frequent colonialist strategy. it's how cortez conquered the aztecs w/a couple hundred guys + a couple of cannons (well + ruthlessnes + some help from aztec mythology but anyway). the british were particularly good at it. it's how they ran the raj. it lead to many arbitrary borders tho tbh the borders of europe are pretty arbitrary too.

as well it's important to acknowledge that many postcolonial leaders have fucked up badly. helped along, sure, but the mobutu sese sekos (+ pol pots) have contributed mightily to the continuing fucked up state of their countries.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
many, many peoples kept slaves before the middle passage.

Which makes the whole Egypt thing that some black nationalist/Afro-centrist people have all the more mystifying. The ancient Egyptians captured and kept black slaves and quite explicitly depicted this in their own artistic records.
 
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zhao

there are no accidents
this belongs here more than in the "What England Thinks Of Itself" thread:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentis...atastrophe-europe?fb=native&CMP=FBCNETTXT9038

In his book Exterminate All the Brutes, Sven Lindqvist shows how the ideology that led to Hitler's war and the Holocaust was developed by the colonial powers. Imperialism required an exculpatory myth. It was supplied, primarily, by British theorists.

"Last week three elderly Kenyans established the right to sue the British government for the torture that they suffered – castration, beating and rape – in the Kikuyu detention camps it ran in the 1950s.

Many tens of thousands were detained and tortured in the camps. I won't spare you the details: we have been sparing ourselves the details for far too long. Large numbers of men were castrated with pliers. Others were raped, sometimes with the use of knives, broken bottles, rifle barrels and scorpions. Women had similar instruments forced into their vaginas. The guards and officials sliced off ears and fingers, gouged out eyes, mutilated women's breasts with pliers, poured paraffin over people and set them alight. Untold thousands died."
 

zhao

there are no accidents
and


640x392_53269_247471.jpg


Ex-French minister’s ‘arm’ strains ties with Algeria
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Good Monbiot article (as they usually are, tbh).

What he says about empire was interestingly mirrored in the docu I watched on the US war on drugs/prison system complex this week - the identification and harrassment of a group (first demarcated by race, and then more generally by class, in that case) are used as comparatively 'innocent' and easily instituted preparatory steps, eventually down the line paving the way for the mass detention or annihilation of that group, which is accepted because of the gradual moulding of public opinion in the direction that the group in question is subhuman/Other. It always works the same way - in the US prison system of course, detention rather than annihilation (death penalty notwithstanding) is the ultimate goal, but detention on a scale unseen before, at least in modern times.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
what's the deal here? like our morris dancers?

They're meant to be Zwarte Piet, who's the comedy darkie sidekick, I mean faithful companion, to Sinterklaas, the Dutch St. Nicholas/Father Christmas. According to folklore, Saint Nick freed an African slave, who was so overcome with gratitude that he decided to serve him anyway. There have been attempts to reinvent him as a chimney sweep who's blackened with soot, but in most representations he also has huge lips and Afro hair.

I know the word 'morris' as in 'Morris dancer' is meant to come from 'Moorish', but they don't generally use blackface, do they? At least not any more.
 

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
I know the word 'morris' as in 'Morris dancer' is meant to come from 'Moorish', but they don't generally use blackface, do they? At least not any more.
There's still quite a lot of black face paint in morris and similar folk traditions (mummers and so on), but I think it's more of a paint-your-face-to-look-weird sort of thing (as you see in folk dance / ritual stuff all over the world) that traditionally uses black makeup rather than specifically trying to look african - there's all sorts of other stuff in the getups (ie all the bells and dishcloths and breeches and things), none of which has any racial connotations that I can see...
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
It's second season I've been here but it still makes me do a double take, seeing a couple of white guys prancing down the high street covered in bootpolish, with Afro wigs, red lips and big gold earrings. And it's not like there are no black people here - not that it would be OK if there weren't, but it makes it seem even stranger. Can't help but wonder how they'd fare in Brixton or Tottenham...
 

Ransbeeck

Well-known member
Zwarte Piet is not supposed to be a helper in the sense of a butler or something worse. He's more of a personal assistant to the old, confused man.

It's a long time ago, but I don't remember as a kid seeing Zwarte Piet as an African.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I guess it's probably something that gets reinterpreted* every now and again, perhaps varies from place to place as well. The ZPs around here (Noord Brabant) are pretty similar to the 'gollywog' figures you used to see in Britain:

golliwogs.jpg


*e.g. I've heard some people have tried to cast him as a (presumably white) chimney sweep whose face is blackened by soot. Which isn't really much better since C19 child labour practices were basically slavery in all but name, but it does at least attempt to de-racialize the whole thing.
 
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Ransbeeck

Well-known member
The interpretation of his role might have shifted a bit, but I don't think he was ever interpreted as African.

My grandparents would never have called a black man black (zwart), they would have said nigger (a word that only started to be considered offensive through the influence of American culture). Zwart was a colour, not a racial attribute. The face paint is an attribute of the Zwarte Piet character. I read the Wikipedia page about Golliwogs, and they were supposed to look African (big lips and frizzy hair), while Zwarte Piet isn't.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/...utch-black-pete-tradition-grows/?breakingnews

an interesting article on this.

The idea that the Netherlands is now questioning its own reputation for tolerance (I've seen this mentioned in several contexts recently - don't know how accurate a reflection this is of what's really happening) seems to me odd, as I didn't understand what that reputation was ever based upon (obviously it must be more than just 'tolerance' over soft drugs). At the least, its recent history seems pretty conflicted. Which is true of most places of course.
 
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Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Look, the Zwarte Piets I've seen parading around central Eindhoven for the last month or so have got black skin, frizzy black Afro wigs, bright red lips and huge gold hoop earrings. He is quite clearly meant to be 'black' as in 'African'.

And St. Nicholas has a long association with one or more African men in Dutch folklore, it's pretty well known. I'd heard of it years before I moved here. The character may ultimately have had some other origin but the ones I've seen around here are definitely cartoon Africans.

@baboon: well I think it's been a pretty good place for gay rights for some time, for one thing. And at least until quite recently it's had, as far as I can tell, a fairly similar sort of laissez-faire multiculturalism that was standard in the UK under New Labour. The tolerance of 'soft' drugs and the sex trade is the most well-known aspect outside the country but there is more to it than that, I think. But of course it's become strained, and people are starting to question large-scale immigration from countries where attitudes aren't so positive about gay rights or women's rights for example, and then there's a reaction to it - hence politicians who are left-liberal on social issues but against immigration. My girlfriend has a copy of Murder in Amsterdam, I should borrow it at some point I think.
 
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Ransbeeck

Well-known member
Yeah, for the record, I'm not denying there's widespread racism in the Benelux. It's probably worse here than in any other Western country.

But I don't see how a child could associate this:
350px-TweeZwartePietenKleding.png

with modern day people of African descent.
 
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