Colonial critics deployed irony that literal-minded elites misconstrued as factual claim

Evidence

Knaap’s attack elicited a quick response. J. E. de Meyier, the editor of De Indische Gids and a loyal backer of the government, came to the Governor-General’s defense, criticizing Knaap’s “spiteful tone,” his ignorance of how high state officials operate, and his failure to see the difference between an actual Governor-General and a “khalif” from A Thousand and One Nights. Knaap snapped back that De Meyier displayed his own inept art of reading if he thought to take the comparison between the Governor-General and a despotic Muslim ruler literally: anyone who had lived in the Indies for decades and had prolonged contact with the Indo poor would recognize his meaning and intent. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 945

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader literature on rhetorical strategy in colonial public disputes and how critics of empire used literary/dramatic tropes to evade censorship while elites attacked their literalism.