Colonial history should probe the inner life and sensory regimes of empire’s agents

Evidence

I broach that disquieted space by asking what it took to live a colonial life, how those who lived off empire imagined themselves within it, what structured attachments heightened or dulled their sensory regimes, what interior space they inhabited, what distance might have existed between the “feel” of living off empire and what imperial states employed those in their service to do. Du Bois spells out the task mercilessly, urging “unusual points of vantage” to explore “souls undressed and from the back and side,” and the “working of [white] entrails”—“white folk” “hung, bound by their own binding.” — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1371

Categorization

• SEED: The Du Bois ‘working of white entrails’ framing is a memorable hook for an essay on studying colonizers’ interiorities from unusual vantage points.