The standard critique assumes knowledge piercing power would crash empire.

Evidence

In such accounts, the cultivation of “ignorance” and the vitality of empire go hand in hand. In this chapter I argue that these are accounts that elicit knowing approval but in the end they may be for us to question, if not reject. A standard critique of empire holds that imperial rule nourishes and feeds off the cultivation of ignorance, that empire is in the business of limiting, distorting, and obscuring knowledge and that with more of it, empires would be more vulnerable to critique; that critique should expose imperial pretences, that knowledge pierces what obscures the workings of power, weakens its hold, and, with sustained exposure, could be made to crash. In this frame, moral conscience and increased knowledge are redemptive and, like ignorance and empire, thought to go hand in hand. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1342

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to reader’s broader epistemic-anxieties frame: the ‘knowledge equals power and virtue’ assumption that this book sets out to dismantle.