Colonial discourse lets the colonizer speak for the colonized while silencing them

Evidence

As a rhetorical performance Balfour’s speech is significant for the way in which he plays the part of, and represents, a variety of characters. There are of course “the English,” for whom the pronoun “we” is used with the full weight of a distinguished, powerful man who feels himself to be representative of all that is best in his nation’s history. Balfour can also speak for the civilized world, the West, and the relatively small corps of colonial officials in Egypt. If he does not speak directly for the Orientals, it is because they after all speak another language; yet he knows how they feel since he knows their history, their reliance upon such as he, and their expectations. Still, he does speak for them in the sense that what they might have to say, were they to be asked and might they be able to answer, would somewhat uselessly confirm what is already evident: that they are a subject race, dominated by a race that knows them and what is good for them better than they could possibly know themselves. Their great moments were in the past; they are useful in the modern world only because the powerful and up-to-date empires have effectively brought them out of the wretchedness of their decline and turned them into rehabilitated residents of productive colonies. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 114

Categorization

• XREF: This is the template for the ‘Other cannot speak for themselves’ move that recurs in later Islamophobia studies; connects to the ‘they cannot represent themselves, they must be represented’ logic Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire. — connects to: Platform mission statements echo colonial law’s benevolent attitude toward the subjugated — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 338; A Yale debater publicly defended colonial delay in self-government — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 226; the MOC “The Tongue of Power: When Language Becomes the Battlefield of Empire”
• DEFINE: Defines the rhetorical mechanism of ‘speaking for’ the colonized as both a tactic and an epistemology of domination.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 114