Colonial Rationality and the Other: The British in North Borneo.


 

THE SARAWAK MUSEUM JOURNAL
VOL LIV NO.75 DECEMBER 1999

 
 
Title : 
Colonial Rationality and the Other: The British in North Borneo.

Author : 
Callistus Fernandez

Abstract:
Conquest of new territories, expanding markets and the civilising of the Other very much colour colonial expansionist policies in the New World. To the colonials, the conquest of new territories was largely driven by profit motivation i.e. increasing their wealth as well as expanding their business into the newly acquired regions. To the conquered, it meant changes in every aspect of their social life. Colonial discourse came to mean many things but largely it was seen as the way the colonial thought of the Other, ruled the Other and created the Other. One need not look far as this argument is posed interestingly in Edward Said’s Orientalism2 where he saw the making or construction of the Other- to an extent what the colonial thoughtwas the Other in essence became the Other in practice, adhered too by them as their image. Michel Foucault3 saw the element of power factored into various relationships which always favoured the one with power over the one with none or object of power. Perhaps, Bernard Cohn’s4 brilliant discussion on colonial knowledge should be a standard text for any serious academic in understanding the power of colonial discourse (or colonial knowledge) in constructing the Other. The nature of colonial knowledge in influencing every aspect of the Other’s life- from clothing to history and every element of the Other’s social life is the object of investigation and redefinition. Cohn’s idea of colonial intervention not just inclusive of the invasion of the physical space but also of the epistemologicalone. In the end, with pessimistic tone, the Other is and can be no more than what the colonial constructed or a colonial invention- resembling a Christmas cookie, moulded, shaped and created to taste in the imagery of the “creator”.

DOI:
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How to cite:
Callistus Fernandez. (1999). Colonial Rationality and the Other: The British in North Borneo. The Sarawak Museum Journal, LIV (75): 253-274

References

 

 

 
 

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