Stereotyping distance operates independently of imperial power relations

Evidence

Orientalism as a colonial discourse could reach maturity only after England had acquired the military and technological capacity to dominate the world. Its actual ability to build a vast empire that stretched the globe created the conditions for a form of racialization that had previously existed as stereotypes in the literary sphere to become a dominant ideology of colonization. This ideology, however, did not get reproduced exactly since it was shaped by the conditions of the post-Enlightenment period becoming more secular in orientation. While the “savage” Indian was interchangeable with the “savage” Muslim going back to the seventeenth century, as Matar argues, late eighteenth and nineteenth century racialization acquired a more capitalist gloss, with commercial needs eclipsing the drive to conversion, a hallmark of early modern imperialism. The eighteenth century English author, Daniel Defoe of Robinson Crusoe fame, captured this shift in his call for British domination of Muslim lands based not on Christian zeal but market needs. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 153 (#complicates, via linked claim)

The outstanding similarity between Rhodes’s rule in South Africa and Cromer’s domination of Egypt was that both regarded the countries not as desirable ends in themselves but merely as means for some supposedly higher purpose. They were similar therefore in their indifference and aloofness, in their genuine lack of interest in their subjects, an attitude which differed as much from the cruelty and arbitrariness of native despots in Asia as from the exploiting carelessness of conquerors, or the insane and anarchic oppression of one race tribe through another. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 547 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Stereotyping stems from ideological environments, not just individual self-interest; Instrumental imperial rule generated hallmark indifference and aloofness toward subjects — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 547; Stereotypes become dominant colonial ideology only once empire gains material power — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 153 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Stereotypes become dominant colonial ideology only once empire gains material power #complicates (0.85) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 153
• Stereotype consensuality across groups requires ideological domination plus false consciousness #complicates (0.83)
• Instrumental imperial rule generated hallmark indifference and aloofness toward subjects #complicates (0.82) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 547
• Power asymmetry between colonizer and colonized shapes what the colonizer sees. #complicates (0.80) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 587