An author can cite a critic of poverty as its champion

Evidence

Indians get walk-ons, but remain, for the part, bit-players in their own history. Once this form is set, it scarcely matters that individual fictional Brits get unsympathetic treatment from their author. The form insists that they are the ones whose stories matter, and this is so much less than the whole truth that it must be called a falsehood. It will not do to argue that Scott was attempting to portray the British in India, and that such was the nature of imperialist society that the Indians would only have had bitparts. It is no defense to say that work adopts, in its structure, the very ethic which, in its content and tone, it pretends to dislike. It is, in fact, the case for the prosecution. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1513 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Moral-poverty framing revives discredited cultural pathology arguments; Christian authors reframed worldly subordination as otherworldly superiority — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 405; Literary naturalism can normalize a privileged white subject’s exculpatory worldview — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 119 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• A work’s narrative form can encode the very ethic its content pretends to condemn #complicates (0.71) — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1513