A settler-colonial regime whose founding narrative is sacred cannot secularize without renouncing that narrative

Evidence

In other words, arrange it so that the white man, and particularly the Belgian, and even more particularly Albert or Leopold, takes his place at the head of the hierarchy of Bantu life forces, and you have done the trick. You will have brought this miracle to pass: the Bantu god will take responsibility for the Belgian colonialist order, and any Bantu who dares to raise his hand against it will be guilty of sacrilege. — Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism, 147 (#expands, via linked claim)

Ironically, as this civilizing project necessarily presupposed the possibility of historical development and cultural, social, and intellectual progress on the part of natives considered racially naive and immature, it presumed the claim to transcendental value at once economic and epistemological;:. legal and moral. Transcendental value was represented in the universal currencies of money and the word, productive labor and sanctified truth, industry and knowledge, rational legality and moral virtue, The assumption is ironically universalist, for these imposed aspirations to universal ideals were always no more than embodiments of European, Christian virtue and practice, morality and truth. — David Theo Goldberg, The Racial State, 49 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• recurring: this claim recurs 2 times within its source
• XREF: connects to: Co-opting indigenous cosmology makes colonial rule sacred and rebellion sacrilegious — Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism, 147; Monotheistic sacred narratives ground colonial sovereignty and identity against the Other. — Achille Mbembe, Necropolitics, 99; Christianity obscured itself by promoting secular critique during colonial expansion (+9 more)

Related

• Co-opting indigenous cosmology makes colonial rule sacred and rebellion sacrilegious (similarity 0.87)
• Monotheistic sacred narratives ground colonial sovereignty and identity against the Other. (similarity 0.85)
• Colonizers use the colonized’s own spirituality to deny them material claims (similarity 0.82)

Broader Connections

• Co-opting indigenous cosmology makes colonial rule sacred and rebellion sacrilegious #expands (0.86) — Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism, 147
• Colonial universalism disguised European Christian values as transcendent truths #expands (0.82) — David Theo Goldberg, The Racial State, 49
• Monotheistic sacred narratives ground colonial sovereignty and identity against the Other. #expands (0.80) — Achille Mbembe, Necropolitics, 99
• Christianity obscured itself by promoting secular critique during colonial expansion #complicates (0.80)