Colonial authorities erred by treating rumor as speech

Evidence

The odd coupling of Soviet structuralism and French anti-humanism sometimes produces a misleading effect. For example, the applicability to rumor of Barthes’s suggestion that ascription of an author closes up writing should alert us to rumor’s writing-like (scriptible) character rather than oblige us to displace Barthes’s remark to speech via Vygotsky. Dialogue, Vygotsky’s example, is the privileged example of the so-called communication of direct verbality, of two immediately self-present sources or “authors.” … In fact the mistake of the colonial authorities was to take rumor for speech, to impose the requirements of speech in the narrow sense upon something that draws its strength from participation in writing in the general sense. — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader, 1809

Categorization

• XREF: The empirical-legal error (state misreading rumor as attributable speech) maps onto the reader’s question about whom the state holds responsible for collective utterance. — connects to: Colonial officials could transmute rumor into actionable evidence; Colonial officials ritualistically framed rumor-derived reports as verified facts; Colonial facts were constituted out of rumor as often as the reverse — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1274 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Colonial officials could transmute rumor into actionable evidence #contradicts (0.85)
• Colonial officials ritualistically framed rumor-derived reports as verified facts #complicates (0.80)
• Rumor functioned both as unreliable noise and as the best available colonial intelligence #qualifies (0.80) — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1038
• Colonial facts were constituted out of rumor as often as the reverse #expands (0.75) — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1274
• Colonial authority rested on incomplete knowledge and hierarchies of rumor, not omniscience #expands (0.75)