Colonial surveillance operated through fuzzy distinctions rather than Cartesian reason-passion binaries

Evidence

Colonial states “kept watch” through a fuzzier set of conceptual distinctions than the rubrics of “reason” versus “passions” imply and through a blurred rather than a sharp Cartesian lens. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 363

Categorization

• XREF: Challenges the rational-bureaucratic model of colonial administration; resonates with the idea that archives are discourses of reason masking affect.