Colonizers use the colonized’s own spirituality to deny them material claims

Evidence

Since Bantu thought is ontological, the Bantu only ask for satisfaction of an ontological nature. Decent wages! Comfortable housing! Food! These Bantu are pure spirits, I tell you: “What they desire first of all and above all is not the improvement of their economic or material situation, but the white man’s recognition of and respect for their dignity as men, their full human value.” — Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism, 144

Categorization

• SEED: An essay angle: how modern corporations deploy ‘respect for local culture’ rhetoric to deflect material-concession demands — the Tempels logic relocated.
• XREF: connects to: Colonial states museumized sacred sites to legitimize themselves as guardians of tradition — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 673; Calvinist predestination let colonizers rationalize Native dispossession as divine judgment. — Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the…, 119; Monotheistic sacred narratives ground colonial sovereignty and identity against the Other. — Achille Mbembe, Necropolitics, 99 (+2 more)

Related

• Calvinist predestination let colonizers rationalize Native dispossession as divine judgment. (similarity 0.83)
• A settler-colonial regime whose founding narrative is sacred cannot secularize without renouncing that narrative (similarity 0.82)
• Celebrating colonized culture can mask complicity with material exploitation (similarity 0.80)
• Bantu Philosophy challenged the colonial paternalism underpinning mission methods (similarity 0.79)
• Monotheistic sacred narratives ground colonial sovereignty and identity against the Other. (similarity 0.78)
• Colonial psychology shifts blame for colonial violence onto the colonized (similarity 0.78)
• Co-opting indigenous cosmology makes colonial rule sacred and rebellion sacrilegious (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Calvinist predestination let colonizers rationalize Native dispossession as divine judgment. #exemplifies (0.90) — Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the…, 119
• Monotheistic sacred narratives ground colonial sovereignty and identity against the Other. #exemplifies (0.85) — Achille Mbembe, Necropolitics, 99