The Eurowhite Man's Burden --in eastern Germany
The wonderful thing about self-enamored western commentators is this: They seem to have only one story. Here is Neal Ascherson, commenting on the anniversary of German unification in today's Guardian: "In place of Berlin's Wall now stands a barrier of sullen resentment.""
Sullen . . . sullen. . . What a nice adjective. Where have I seen it play so central a role?
Yes! Kipling! Here is the first eight lines of his infamous hymn to putatively benign colonialism, possibly the biggest lie, the iconic oxymoron of world history, "The White Man's Burden":
"TAKE up the White Man's burden -
Send forth the best ye breed -
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness
On fluttered folk and wild -
Your new-caught sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child."
This poem was written with the political purpose to urge the US Congress (and presumably the white colonizer vocal majority of the US society at the time), in 1899, to extend US colonial ventures to the Philippines, a Spanish colony embroiled in a losing battle to preserve its colonial rule against an anticolonial, popular uprising. (BTW, the US did oblige--but that's not my main point here.)
What is lovely about Eton- and Cambridge-educated and military-hardened ("with the royal Marine commandos [. . .] in Malaya" , no less) Scottish octuagenerian, a former student of Hobsbawm, Neal Ascherson's handy colonial reference, imprinted in the choice of the term "sullen" to describe an entire society, 17 million or so, is its straightforwardness. A truly wonderful example of the outright racial put-down of, by extension, the entire post-state-socialist fourth-or-so of humankind as unable to get with the program of neoliberal capitalism. Where do we even begin? Is a cultural inability to enjoy neoliberal market "life" "causing or marked by an atmosphere lacking in cheer"? Or, rather, “given to or displaying a resentful silence and often irritability"?
It is a truly exciting question how to read that "lacking in cheer", "resentful silence" and "often irritability". Would Mr. Ascherson prefer "the Polish plumber" or "the Hungarian peacock dance"? Is the Plumber or the Peacock really more abundant "in cheer", free of "resentful silence" and never "irritable"?
Be that as it may, this chatter about "sullenness" is, clearly, all about putative "western' (here: western German) "superiority" and "eastern" (here eastern German) "inferiority". Textbook cultural racism.
Bravo, and thanks. Just the conversation the world needed.
Sullen . . . sullen. . . What a nice adjective. Where have I seen it play so central a role?
Yes! Kipling! Here is the first eight lines of his infamous hymn to putatively benign colonialism, possibly the biggest lie, the iconic oxymoron of world history, "The White Man's Burden":
"TAKE up the White Man's burden -
Send forth the best ye breed -
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness
On fluttered folk and wild -
Your new-caught sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child."
This poem was written with the political purpose to urge the US Congress (and presumably the white colonizer vocal majority of the US society at the time), in 1899, to extend US colonial ventures to the Philippines, a Spanish colony embroiled in a losing battle to preserve its colonial rule against an anticolonial, popular uprising. (BTW, the US did oblige--but that's not my main point here.)
What is lovely about Eton- and Cambridge-educated and military-hardened ("with the royal Marine commandos [. . .] in Malaya" , no less) Scottish octuagenerian, a former student of Hobsbawm, Neal Ascherson's handy colonial reference, imprinted in the choice of the term "sullen" to describe an entire society, 17 million or so, is its straightforwardness. A truly wonderful example of the outright racial put-down of, by extension, the entire post-state-socialist fourth-or-so of humankind as unable to get with the program of neoliberal capitalism. Where do we even begin? Is a cultural inability to enjoy neoliberal market "life" "causing or marked by an atmosphere lacking in cheer"? Or, rather, “given to or displaying a resentful silence and often irritability"?
It is a truly exciting question how to read that "lacking in cheer", "resentful silence" and "often irritability". Would Mr. Ascherson prefer "the Polish plumber" or "the Hungarian peacock dance"? Is the Plumber or the Peacock really more abundant "in cheer", free of "resentful silence" and never "irritable"?
Be that as it may, this chatter about "sullenness" is, clearly, all about putative "western' (here: western German) "superiority" and "eastern" (here eastern German) "inferiority". Textbook cultural racism.
Bravo, and thanks. Just the conversation the world needed.
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