Modernization narratives in legal history erase colonial coercion by crediting natives’ desire

Evidence

It is striking, for instance, that in earlier (and a majority of current) accounts of so-called legal reform in the Muslim world, the narratives are dominated by a modernization theory that almost never refers to colonialism, but to “indigenous” will and desire to reform. (Recently, however, colonialism has begun to be insinuated into certain reform narratives.) This was, consciously or not, a discursive strategy to avert responsibility and accountability for imperial and colonialist ventures, but it also seemed consistent with “good scholarship” to attribute agency to the “native” populations and their leadership. … Because the processes are seen as having been predetermined by an inevitable course of unilinear historical trajectory, the course itself dominates the field of vision, excluding any other possibility. It means very little to say that a person sentenced to death has agency just because he happened to be given the absolute choice to die by hanging or by a bullet. For once the processes that led to this sentence are fully revealed and taken into account—that, for instance, he was entirely innocent of the charge against him—the entire theory collapses, since his choice of the method of execution is rendered irrelevant to the overall facts of his life and its tragic end. The theory of agency here is of no use. It does not tell us that the mere encounter between the victim and victimizer ab initio sealed the fate of the victim, that, whatever resistance the latter showed, it was within the foregone sovereign predetermination and decision of the victimizer to terminate the victim. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 210

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The hanging-vs-bullet thought experiment is a devastating compact argument against agency theory under structural domination; it resists one-sentence summary and sits with you.
• ADDENDUM: Relates to ‘On Sacrifice’ themes of sovereign power deciding victims’ fates; and to the general question of who narrates agency in colonial and postcolonial history.
• XREF: Connects to Foucault’s critique of juridical power and to the broader critique of modernization theory in dependency/world-systems scholarship. — connects to: Platform mission statements echo colonial law’s benevolent attitude toward the subjugated — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 338