MASTER ANALYTICS

starting point:
peripheral Europe inside polycentric world
→ from weakness to aggression

trajectory:
from Europe's 14th-century global weakness
to 16th-century global aggression (construction of power)
to 19th-century global domination (consolidation of power)

themes:

Arendt: 19th-century European imperialism: organization of political control and ideology of social superiority

Silverblatt: 16th-century Spanish Inquisition: race thinking and bureaucratic rule

→ i.e., barbarism inside “civilization” and “modernity”

knowledge is (literally) power:

1. knowledge gives you power -- the ability to understand and thus succeed in many situations
2. knowledge invests power into your understanding -- the ability to define situations to your own advantage (i.e., it is invention, not “knowledge”)

→ i.e., it propagates cultural framework

● unquestioned assumptions; no value to interaction or negotiation
● everything is “already known”: audience defer to “expertise”
● nothing is unknowable -- limitless, containable, transferable

invention of “knowledge”:

● new sciences (e.g., cartography)
● new books (e.g., atlas, travel book)
● new occupations (e.g., engineer)

who is capable of knowledge -- European, not indigenous
where is knowledge located -- Europe, not elsewhere
how is knowledge validated -- European print culture

→ i.e., able to relocate knowledge to one’s own cultural dominion
→ i.e., able to redirect it to one’s own social power (to dominance, not resistance)

invention of secular “expertise” (science independent from government and religion)

material and cultural investments toward superiority:

MATERIAL INVESTMENTS IN TECHNOLOGIES (militarization, projection outward of empire)

CULTURAL INVESTMENTS IN VALUES (science; extraction inward to empire)

European colonialism in the 15th-16th centuries:

coastal enclave; diplomacy; dominate shipping; trading outposts in Africa and Asia (esp. Portugal) where indigenous peoples were strong

coastal dominion; conquest; dominate territory; colonization in South and Central America (esp. Spain) where indigenous peoples were weak

ordinary people as agents of English empire:

→ new sector in service of imperializing government and economy
→ broadening agents of trade and empire

● Alexander Garden (doctor)
● John Sarracoll (trader)
● John Lawson (surveyor)
● audience -- growing literate public

construction of belief in cultural superiority and in moral rightness
justification of massive violence
cultural work of normalization -- making acceptable the unacceptable

cultural categories/hierarchies:

multiplicities versus binaries
reality versus ideology

→ European strategy to impose binary categories (cultural work of constructing superiority)
→ European representation: from multiple ethnicities to single race

cultural strategies of resistance and domination:

assimilation as means of strength? (Guaman Poma)
assimilation as target of weakness? (assimilated Native American women)

17th-century rise of European essentialism:

“becoming English”
“becoming European”

→ i.e., early 17th-century representation of four quadrants of world:  Europe, Africa, Asia, and America

popular/academic genres: travel books, science books, etc.:

erasure of indigenous voices, subjectivities, ideologies -- as if no real existence
erasure of Spanish conquest -- as if no infliction of violence
erasure of historical change -- as if timeless purity of Native Americans (i.e., essentialism)

“becoming Indian”