Europe’s colonial past is irreversible and constitutive of its present identity

Evidence

The motive of “European history” in this representation is the story of Europe’s active power to reconstruct the world (within Europe and beyond) in its own Faustian image. Europe’s colonial past is not merely an epoch of overseas power that is now decisively over. It is the beginning of an irreversible global transformation that remains an intrinsic part of “European experience,” and is part of the reason that Europe has become what it is today. It is not possible for Europe to be represented without evoking this history and the way in which its active power has continually constructed its own exclusive boundary—and transgressed it. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 826

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Milgrom/Shapiro on institutions and the ‘European civilization’ framing; also parallels the Derrida/Asad reading of Europe’s boundary-constructing identity. — connects to: Colonialism’s legacies persist long after colonial rule ends. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 257; Holocaust memorialization lets Europe deny its colonial racial past — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 826; The colonial past frames present-day French debates but rarely German ones — Manuel Borutta and Jan C. Jansen, Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar…, 102