Imperial ignorance is an active refusal, not a passive lack of knowledge

Evidence

The noun “ignorance” and the verb “to ignore” share a social and legal etymology, where definition of the former, “want of knowledge,” is predicated on the definition of the latter active, verbal form, “to refuse to take notice of.” How these two are joined, what political measures and psychic processes produce subjectivities that instantiate both, is a condition of imperial histories we would do well not to ignore. … The politics of disregard may cast longer shadows still, across the accounts we give of ourselves in the face of emergent predicaments of imperial formations in a contemporary world that is so visibly different and subjacently resonant today. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1529

Categorization

• DEFINE: Ties ‘ignorance’ etymologically to ‘ignore,’ reframing want of knowledge as active refusal — the core definitional move of the chapter.
• DEEPTHINKING: The distinction between ignorance-as-absence and ignorance-as-refusal reframes the whole epistemic stakes of colonial archives; dense enough to sit with for days.
• XREF: Directly serves the reader’s stated purpose on epistemic anxieties and colonial common sense; also resonates with work on ‘epistemic violence’ and the active production of not-knowing. — connects to: Political ignorance reflects lack of opportunity for unhurried reasoning, not low intelligence. — Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding politics: how Americans…, 1095
• ADDENDUM: The ‘politics of disregard’ echoes the mechanisms by which colonial subjects were rendered invisible — parallel to how sacrifice and modesty panics were regulated through deliberate not-seeing.