Imperialism's Costs & It Remedy?

 The above topic has been on mind today. Criticisms of wokeness and of book banning being a topic of a post written earlier today.

Julia Shiota's The Shape of Nations appeared today on the RSS feed from Ploughshares. Some points:

I was introduced to postcolonial theory in my junior year of college. The institution I went to was, at the time, quite traditional in its focus on the Western canon. There was the occasional “diverse” course offering each semester—African literature, Asian American literature—that tried to cover a huge swath history and entire forgotten canons in one term, when the study of Medieval literature, for instance, was broken up into two whole semesters with the possibility for more specialized courses later on. Postcolonial theory broke into my studies like a wave, unearthing a path to critically think about the things that always ate away at the back of my mind when I read the English classics. Thinking about where the wealth of aristocrats came from and how resources were violently taken from the periphery and pumped into the metropole gave me the vocabulary to talk about the inequality I saw throughout American history. This type of critique came easily for me.

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Outside of European imperialism, though, there is another country known for its colonial history: Japan. It was inevitable, then, that I eventually turn the critique of postcolonial theory back to myself and the country where I was born.

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While it is easy, then, to try to elide history by saying atrocities are part of the past, the impact of Japanese colonial expansion is still felt by many in Japan today. One cannot simply outgrow or outlive a colonial, racist history. In order for the system to change, we need to stare at it and acknowledge it for what it is.

In Citizen: An American Lyric, Claudia Rankine grapples with similar long-lasting effects of violent history as experienced by Black people in the United States. She writes, “The world is wrong. You can’t put the past behind you . . . it’s turned your flesh into its own cupboard. Not everything remembered is useful but it all comes from the world to be stored in you.”

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On June 2, 1961, James Baldwin gave a talk on nationalism and colonialism, saying, “The tragedy of this country now is that most of the people who say they care about it do not care. What they care about is their safety and their profits. What they care about is not rocking the boat.” Baldwin’s words ring painfully true nearly sixty years after he spoke them. But the increasing public pushback against police brutality offers hope that people are starting to care en masse. Baldwin’s words, however, also act as a warning. Large scale social change does not happen within the span of a few weeks. We must keep pushing towards change—including interrogating our own culpability in injustice.

How do we correct our injustices? I see it as being each individual working to make life better for all until we have societal change. The individual cannot pass off responsibility to groups, but groups do not exist without individuals. It means persistence more than revolution. Minds need educated rather than brutalized. 

Such are my thoughts.

sch 4/29