Empire continues reshaping colonized peoples’ lives long after formal decolonization

Evidence

Twenty-five years after its publication, Orientalism once again raises the question of whether modern imperialism ever ended, or whether it has continued in the Orient since Napoleon’s entry into Egypt two centuries ago. Arabs and Muslims have been told that victimology and dwelling on the depredations of empire is only a way of evading responsibility in the present. You have failed, you have gone wrong, says the modern Orientalist. This of course is also V. S. Naipaul’s contribution to literature, that the victims of empire wail on while their country goes to the dogs. But what a shallow calculation of the imperial intrusion that is, how summarily it scants the immense distortion introduced by the empire into the lives of “lesser” peoples and “subject races” generation after generation, how little it wishes to face the long succession of years through which empire continues to work its way in the lives of, say, Palestinians or Congolese or Algerians or Iraqis. We allow justly that the Holocaust has permanently altered the consciousness of our time: Why do we not accord the same epistemological mutation in what imperialism has done, and what Orientalism continues to do? — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 36

Categorization

• XREF: Directly feeds the Islamophobia field’s claim that colonial structures persist; connects to Said’s continuing-effect argument used later against ‘victimology’ dismissal rhetoric. — connects to: Colonialism’s legacies persist long after colonial rule ends. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 257; Empire is a mutable structure that keeps reconfiguring race.
• SEED: Angle: the ‘Holocaust as epistemological mutation’ parallel — why does one genocide get acknowledged as consciousness-altering while empire’s ongoing effects are dismissed as victimology?
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 36