Colonial power operates by strategically separating law from morality.

Evidence

It might appear at first sight that I am making a familiar argument about the introduction of “foreign codes.” But my concern here is neither with the geographical origin of the law nor with codification as such. I argue that it is the power to make a strategic separation between law and morality that defines the colonial situation, because it is this separation that enables the legal work of educating subjects into a new public morality. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 1156

Categorization

Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims

• DEFINE: Reframes the colonial situation as defined by the law-morality separation rather than by foreign codes as such.
• SEED: Essay angle: how codification as a technology of moral education — not mere legal imposition — drives colonial modernization projects.

Related

• The colonial power to separate law from morality is what defines the colonial situation (similarity 0.94)
• Law loses its legitimacy when detached from embodied moral sensibilities. (similarity 0.86)
• Colonial rule was framed as a moral civilizing improvement despite being undemocratic. (similarity 0.81)