I’ve not been writing much lately. That’s for a couple of reasons. One is that I’ve been looking at glass and canals with an over-interested eye lately. The other rather more serious reason is that I’ve been trying to think about what a colonial subject might say to her imperial masters. Even a cat can look at a King.
DuctapeFatwa recently wrote of colonialism as a religion
Which got me thinking. Never a good sign.
And a few days ago, I saw a diary over at dKos about sending presents to U.S. soldiers in Iraq and what a wonderful idea it was. Which got me thinking some more.
One of the things it got me thinking about was the difficulty of having honest conversations with colonialists – on whom, I might add, the Republican Party has no monopoly. Imperialism is a thoroughly bi-partisan policy: its flavour may change, but not its substance. Though from where I stand, it always tastes bitter. The difficulty proceeds, I think, not so much from the desire to keep the peace by keeping one’s peace, but from a gap where words fail. Oh – the words can be spoken plainly enough, but their utterance would render my imperial masters deaf to the speaker.
Hence my silence.
When I was in New Zealand, one of my lecturers was a recent Russian émigré. He was far from my favourite person, but I remember one of the things he said well enough to paraphrase it. “You will no longer find,” he said, “great composers in Russia. Now that anything can be said freely, nothing will be said of substance.” What he meant, I think, was that political constraint can result in the production of a musical language that is subtle, rich in allusion and veiled political meaning. I suspect his fears for Russian music were misplaced: evidently he did not foresee Putin.
So let me try to accomplish with allusion, anecdote and vignette what I fear blunt words will not convey.
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If you’re a U.S. citizen, your military used the first city I lived in as a supply base for the land it occupied in the frozen South – though it’s not so frozen now, is it? Your nuclear ships (though your military coyly declined to confirm or deny whether they carried nuclear weapons) moored in the great volcano crater that is Diamond Harbour. Sometimes I’d see your soldiers on the bus. Indeed, my brother married the daughter of one of your ex-soldiers, formerly stationed there in that wild and woolly colony at the end of the earth, until he grew too accustomed to Southern skies to return to the homeland. As colonists from more than one empire had done before him.
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In a world where geography so often defines destiny, my brother and I both made what used to be termed `good marriages’ by the cynical – or perhaps they were just intensely practical. But the dowries and settlements we brought to our nuptials concerned the currency of citizenship.
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In the 1980s, the colony where I grew up staged something akin to a populist, non-violent revolt against its imperial masters. I wouldn’t say it managed to get out of the imperial bedchamber, but it certainly threw the bedcovers about a bit and complained vigorously about having a terrible headache. It got off pretty lightly. Frankly, I put that down to most of the inhabitants having white skin. Had the country had the same demographics as Grenada, I suspect the fallout may have been rather different. But my imperial masters graciously confined themselves to threatening to assassinate the then Prime Minister David Lange (admittedly your Vice-President’s threats were perceived at the time as having about the same level of credibility as the subsequent denials that they were ever made). Various imperial officials announced in peeved tones: “We’re not talking to you any more.” N.Z. was suspended from ANZUS – though this was hardly a punishment — everyone I knew considered it proof positive that every silver lining has a silver lining. From the sidelines, Bob Dole twittered about imposing economic sanctions — but unlike Iraq, N.Z. has no new graveyards filled with infants’ bodies. More recently, a refusal to creep back under the imperial duvet scuppered a free trade agreement between the U.S. and New Zealand. Like I said, the colony I grew up in got off pretty lightly. It’s still just a colony though, with limited Home Rule.
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I moved to the heart of the empire.
I went out with a bunch of (U.S.) grad students to celebrate my flatmate’s birthday.
Being politically inclined, we started talking about U.S. foreign policy and bashing Bush. I contributed some uncharitable remarks about Clinton and the bombing of Sudan’s pharmaceutical factory. (Apparently Christopher Hitchens was experiencing a welcome remission of popinjayitis when he wrote this back in ’98). Most likely, I also waxed lyrical about Madeleine Albright. In a fairly stunning non sequitur, I was told that, “You’re just jealous because New Zealand didn’t fight in World War II.”
The woman who said that was kind and intelligent and would certainly consider herself liberal – possibly even leftist. She hated Bush and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she was been out there campaigning for Kerry last November. But imperialism is a power relation that promotes asymmetric information.
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A friend of mine is at a union meeting. In his first and only language, he explains, patiently and painstakingly to an uncomprehending room, that since the British colonised the country that he came from, he has as much claim on the English language as anybody else. He passes around a copy of his immigration documentation, which is marked “Subject does not speak English. Instruction will be provided upon arrival.” He explains how he was required to attend ‘English language instruction’ classes before being permitted to teach. “But __” someone says, “we don’t mean you. You speak English fine – hell, you speak English better than me! But you’ve got to understand that we’ve got a duty to protect our students.”
Words failed.
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Well – if you’ve made it this far through my self-indulgent rant, let me close by telling you something about me. I took the nickname dove some years ago now – it’s one I’ve used in a few different contexts. It’s kind of a reminder. I wouldn’t describe myself as a naturally peaceful, or non-violent, or particularly compassionate person. I tend to favour a cold fury over sorrow. But growing up red (or at least, deeply pink) in a post-Stalin world provided a fairly compelling reason to think carefully about the proper relationship between means and ends. And that led me to non-violence.
So I oppose the war and I’m committed to non-violence.
And here’s another place where I think words often fail. For many, opposing the war and being non-violent means `supporting the troops by bringing them home.’ That’s not what it means for me. `Supporting the troops’ is the last thing on my mind.
I would be proud to call you granddaughter. OK, great granddaughter, I don’t mean you sound old.
Now here is some advice.
If you are not getting published by somebody, somewhere, under some name, that is a disgrace.
Correct it.
If you are getting published somewhere, demand more money.
Thankyou. That’s really high praise. Especially since your writing is something that I both look out for and up to.
absolutely stunning, my congrats.
Well written and important diary. There seems to be some mechanism in the colonial brain that takes over if not smacked about the ears with a hearty weight of truth from time to time. It’s as though we were so happy in our sleep that we keep drifting off again. We’re working on it, but we do better with help like this. Thanks.
Terrific writing there, Dove.
My own little country is also a US ‘colony,’ or client state. While I think gratitude may be a bit misplaced, the arrangement being based upon perceived mutual interest, it would have been tough for 4 million people inhabiting the fourth largest territory in Europe, and bordering on the Soviets, to be self-supplied with national security. And the memory of 1940 loomed large.
Of course, the Atlantic patronage was at the expense of national autonomy. There’s an anecdote I heard – though utterly innocuous compared with the Vice Presidential death threats – that encapsulates the power asymmetry. Forty years ago, Per Borten from the agrarian Center Party became PM after 20 years of Labor. Soon after his taking office, two gents from the US embassy showed up requesting that he step outside so they could “check his office for hidden microphones” (read: “Get lost so we can bug your office and maybe your phone!”). The PM declined; but just try to imagine two Norwegian spooks attempting the same at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue…
Ultimately I believe the US has been remarkably benign as hegemons go; or at least toward democracies that do not cross its commercial or other interests. So neither NZ nor Norway have all that much to complain about. The latter has reaped rewards from the association out of all proportion to the price exacted. Perhaps the former did not; but the US did leave voluntarily when asked to do so, which is not the usual way of empires after all.
That’s how I would describe myself as well.
Hi Sirocco,
Sorry about my failure to reply over on dKos — in short, the new job starts in a few weeks and in the meanwhile the old one has me in horrible stressed deadline mode. How are things with you at the moment (she says, conspicuously refraining from asking a certain impolite question 😉 )
On the whole, I think that ‘as hegemons go’ phrase covers a multitude of sins — I’m still optimistic enough to want a world without hegemony.
You’re quite right, though, that neither Norway nor New Zealand have been among the countries that have paid heavily and about their different strategic positions at the end of WWII. For myself, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that they left exactly — they still have an airbase at Harewood (Deep Freeze) plus there’s Waihopi up in Marlborough. And apparently N.Z. is making a ‘valuable contribution’ to the war or terror. I think it’s more that they were forced to change a really unpopular policy.
Maybe New Zealand is breaking away from their dependence on one Imperial master. I noticed buried deep within Chinese newspapers a possible free trade agreement between Wellington and Beijing.
Ms Clark and Mr Hu looked very happy. China is NZ’s fourth biggest trade partner right now. Might be NZ finally knows which continent it geographically belongs to. I think the US grip on ASEAN countries has come and gone (well going anyway).
New alignments, trading partners and new opportunities are there for the taking.
Seems as if opponents in NZ focus on China’s human rights trying to link improvement to any trade deal. Could be friends of the US trying to stop this happening. Or are they stopping China becoming the new empire? The world spins on.