Anti-forced-marriage narratives erase colonization from the story

Evidence

The first omission in Wikan’s narrative is of course colonization itself. In one fell swoop, Europeans move from being colonizers to becoming people intent on being honourable towards their former subjects. Importantly, the material relationship between colony and metropole is nowhere in this picture, and we could not guess that European generosity might in fact have been underwritten by decolonization itself and the demands of ‘restless’ natives themselves for recognition. European tolerance arises out of the European character itself, a misplaced tolerance given the natives’ failure to be reborn. — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 280

Categorization

• XREF: Pays off the recurring thread that European tolerance/generosity narratives erase colonial material relations, building on ch10 host-guest metaphors and the earlier claim that European tolerance was underwritten materially.