Ambiguous colonial figures collapse the divide between repression and liberal rights talk

Evidence

During the course of the Great Wahhabi Case, the figure of the Phantom Wahhabi became an important site for a contest between two ideologies of empire—one that linked colonial difference with the need for autocratic and repressive governance and another that defined colonial legitimacy in terms of a universal regime of rights and limits on government despotism. Yet, the figure of the Phantom Wahhabi evoked emotions of fascination, fear, and sympathy that ultimately blurred the boundaries between these two ideologies. — Julia Stephens, The Phantom Wahhabi, 180

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that shared emotional responses—fascination, fear, sympathy—dissolve the ideological distinction between autocracy and liberal rights is a genuinely sticky idea about how empires justify themselves.
• XREF: Connects to Said’s Orientalism and to Saidian accounts of the ambivalence of colonial discourse; also to contemporary debates on how counterterrorism rhetoric blends humanitarian concern with securitization.