Empire creates its own reality rather than responding to discernible facts.

Evidence

How often were central authorities dealing with “loose” local talk and how often did they know it? Facts were constituted out of rumor as often as the other way around. Rumor was a source of “what happened” in subtle if unmanaged ways. But then the archives themselves are, as Paul Veyne notes, “mutilated knowledge,” sometimes no less so than rumors themselves. Rumors registered what people believed could have happened in the past and what could happen in the future. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1274 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim
• XREF: connects to: Empire produces and maintains strategic ignorance as a ruling technology; Imperial dispositions may be the template for modern political self-deception — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1412; Imperial governance rests on a vital lie about empire’s noble projects — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1419 (+5 more)

Related

• Empire produces and maintains strategic ignorance as a ruling technology (similarity 0.85)
• Colonial facts were constituted out of rumor as often as the reverse (similarity 0.84)
• Rumor blurred the boundary between witnessed and envisioned events in colonial knowledge. (similarity 0.82)
• Imperial governance rests on a vital lie about empire’s noble projects (similarity 0.82)
• Colonial bureaucracies collected information largely irrelevant to actual decisions (similarity 0.81)
• Colonial officials’ family histories shaped and discredited their accounts (similarity 0.80)
• Colonial officials could transmute rumor into actionable evidence (similarity 0.79)
• Rumor blurred witness and imagination in what colonial agents claimed to know (similarity 0.79)
• Colonial survey data collection was uneven and often fabricated by officials (similarity 0.79)
• Colonial authority rested on incomplete knowledge and hierarchies of rumor, not omniscience (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Imperial power produces ignorance through acts of refusal to notice #corroborates (0.80)
• Founding myths substitute fabricated narrative for genuine history to serve ruling classes #exemplifies (0.60)
• Colonial facts were constituted out of rumor as often as the reverse #expands (0.60) — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1274
• Colonial authority rested on incomplete knowledge and hierarchies of rumor, not omniscience #corroborates (0.50)