If modernity depends on colonialism, the two are inseparable

Evidence

Whatever dialectic between power and knowledge one may detect in Orientalism (39, 94), it is one that is judged by a chronological causality, not by a mutually dependent production of knowledge as power. That all paradigmatic modern knowledge is power and that its converse is equally true amount to a proposition that Said does not seem likely to accept: that if modernity with all its knowledge forms is inextricably predicated on colonialism, then colonialism defines modernity par excellence, for they are one and the same. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 104

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The closing proposition — that colonialism and modernity are one and the same — is dense enough to sit with: it forces a reformulation of how we periodize and blame.
• SEED: Essay angle: the logical endpoint of postcolonial critique that refuses to soften its conclusion — modernity as colonial by definition, not by contamination.
• XREF: connects to: Colonial power instrumentalized reason and thereby corrupted modernity’s promise — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 615; Colonialism created the conditions for modern capitalism’s emergence — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 251; Colonialism and capitalism form two sides of one continuous dispossession process. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 280 (+1 more)