Colonial peoples were naturalised alongside their land as savage nature to be tamed

Evidence

With the rise of colonial conquest and expansion and the ideology of progress as technological conquest, nature as the primitive and as the past from which certain ‘advanced’ human cultures have supposedly risen is also represented as the dualised underside of the concept of civilisation, in the contrast of civilisation (reason) versus primitivism (barbarism or savagery), and in the ideology of racism as the contrast of higher, civilised races to lower, backward races. Maria Mies writes: ‘The colonies were no longer seen as part of the economy or society, they were lying outside “civilised society”. In the same measure as European conquerors and invaders “penetrated” those “virgin lands”, these lands and their inhabitants were “naturalised”, declared as wild, savage nature waiting to be exploited and tamed by the male civilisers’ (Mies 1986:75). — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 404

Categorization

• XREF: Bridges directly to the settler-colonial and environmental-racism threads in Eco-Justice pedagogy: nature and colonised peoples are constituted by the same dualised move. — connects to: Colonialists freeze sociological differences into fixed biological natures to bar change — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 210; Colonial subjugation extends beyond people to the natural habitat itself — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism: A Critique of…, 441; The noble savage image framed colonized peoples as noble in their wildness — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2: Identity…, 651 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Colonial subjugation extends beyond people to the natural habitat itself #corroborates (0.85) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 441
• The noble savage image framed colonized peoples as noble in their wildness #qualifies (0.80) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 651
• Colonialists treated natives as obstructing objects lacking agency, not as agents #corroborates (0.80) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 388
• Colonial landscapes were feared as wild before any monsters populated them #expands (0.75) — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 356