Colonial historiography fails to capture the psyches of imperial agents

Evidence

As ethnographers and social historians, our attempts to describe that psychic and affective space often turn to caricature and invariably fall short. When David Cannadine purports to answer “how the British saw their empire,” his stick figures are bereft of any interior space—theirs is a naturalized adherence to a class hierarchy brought with them. Ronald Hyam’s survey of “the British [sexual] experience” across “their empire” stays riveted on the sexual—affective dispositions are not broached fur- ther. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1381

Categorization

Category: Connection Points

• XREF: Engages Cannadine, Hyam, Fabian — useful survey for a colonial-studies literature review.

Related

• Colonial history should probe the inner life and sensory regimes of empire’s agents (similarity 0.81)
• Colonial regimes deliberately cultivated habits and redirected sentiments, a neglected topic. (similarity 0.81)
• Scholars attribute flat interiorities to colonial figures they oppose (similarity 0.80)
• Colonial authorities understood sentiment’s governance role before scholars did (similarity 0.80)
• Affective ties between colonizers and colonized were empire’s core, not its fringe (similarity 0.79)
• Colonial sensibilities remain poorly understood despite scholarly confidence otherwise (similarity 0.79)
• Anti-colonial critics long staged affect only as psychic injury of empire. (similarity 0.79)
• Colonial dispositions are trained, contested, and deliberately interpreted (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Scholars have treated colonial sentiment as ornament rather than substance of rule #corroborates (0.75)