Colonial natives appeared shadow-like, absolving European crimes of consequence

Evidence

Outside all social restraint and hypocrisy, against the backdrop of native life, the gentleman and the criminal felt not only the closeness of men who share the same color of skin, but the impact of a world of infinite possibilities for crimes committed in the spirit of play, for the combination of horror and laughter, that is for the full realization of their own phantom-like existence. Native life lent these ghostlike events a seeming guarantee against all consequences because anyhow it looked to these men like a “mere play of shadows. A play of shadows, the dominant race could walk through unaffected and disregarded in the pursuit of its incomprehensible aims and needs.” — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 495

Categorization

• XREF: Directly parallels the ‘construction of the Other’ mechanism that later Islamophobia readings will build on — the other as insubstantial, consequence-free backdrop for the dominant self. — connects to: Rendering black people invisible legitimated colonial land seizure. — Tavengwa Gwekwerere, Davie E. Mutasa, and Kudakwashe Chitofiri, Settlers, Rhodesians, and Supremacists:…, 56
• QUESTION: How does Arendt’s ‘play of shadows’ imagery relate to the dehumanization arguments in her later totalitarianism analysis?