Stony Brook University - SUNY Digital Repository
Stony Brook University - SUNY Digital Repository Stony Brook University - SUNY Digital Repository
unpredictable – again, all that was uncertain – in its yearnings for order, control, and authority over the natural world and natural phenomena. In the end, that “spirit” of America in the nineteenth century was defined by Dewey’s “quest for certainty,” a Certainty “fixed and immutable,” “absolute” and “supreme.” The “reality” or “truth” of the world, and all those who lived upon it, was defined by nineteenth and twentieth century American politics – if not 21 st century American politics as well - through Tarnas’ “unchanging doctrinal formulae” of Perry’s “polar terms of we-right-good vs. other-wrong-bad.” Because of this, American politics was Western religion and American politics was Western science. And American politics in the nineteenth century translated that basic certainty-ordained perspective of Western religion and science into legislation to procure territory and declare war. This process through which religion and science and politics coalesce and then spread out through human culture and society with, again, very real consequences in a very real world can be best explained, I believe, by literary and cultural critic Edward Said with his book Culture and Imperialism, his 1993 study of the artifacts of Western imperialism in the pages of Western literature. To Said, while overt colonialism has ended for the most part, an imperialistic agenda "lingers where it has always been, in a kind of general cultural sphere as well 72
as in specific political, ideological, economic, and social practices" (9). Because of this, while French settlements no longer occupy the Congo and while English rule no longer holds sway over India, this does not mean that imperialism does not persist. While the corporeal presence of those former colonial sovereigns has passed with time, their influence remains in the form of ideological perspectives of reality and “truth.” And it is this influence that surges beneath the surface of culture. Of this, Said writes: The main idea is that even as we must fully comprehend the pastness of the past, there is no just way in which the past can be quarantined from the present. Past and present inform each other. […] [S]carcely any attention has been paid to what I believe is the privileged role of culture in the modern imperial experience, and little notice taken of the fact that the extraordinary global reach of classical nineteenth- and twentieth-century European imperialism still casts a considerable shadow over our own times. (4-5) For Said, again, while colonies may be a thing of the past, the imperialistic ideology that decreed that colonial ships sail to distant shores remains. And I feel that imperialism’s perspective upon reality and “truth” rises from out of Dewey’s “quest for certainty”: a campaign to achieve order, control, and authority over nature and those who dwell within it through the disregard for and restraint of the “foreign” – flesh and blood embodiments of all that is uncertain. For Said, the nineteenth century is crucial to understanding that perspective because it “climaxed 'the rise of the West’ […]. No other 73
- Page 29 and 30: “uncertainty.” But when it was
- Page 31 and 32: After the study was finished, Perry
- Page 33 and 34: a vehement belief in “writing wit
- Page 35 and 36: philosophies of teaching. In his bo
- Page 37 and 38: until sometime later - after confro
- Page 39 and 40: eginnings of humanity itself. In th
- Page 41 and 42: conversation and, in its place, pag
- Page 43 and 44: [W]hat happened to rhetoric in Amer
- Page 45 and 46: cannot be discussed because they ar
- Page 47 and 48: States of America in the 1800s for
- Page 49 and 50: making and doing” (6). And for De
- Page 51 and 52: “Allegory of the Cave.” It took
- Page 53 and 54: not a denigration of Christianity,
- Page 55 and 56: severe, black or white: either foll
- Page 57 and 58: easoning behind those words. Early
- Page 59 and 60: transcendent reality and thus satis
- Page 61 and 62: imaginative novelty and creative tr
- Page 63 and 64: eality that the faithful were allow
- Page 65 and 66: with which all other societies were
- Page 67 and 68: field of composition was not, as Co
- Page 69 and 70: ecause of its “epistemological su
- Page 71 and 72: proclamation “Cogito Ergo Sum,”
- Page 73 and 74: This power of modern Western scienc
- Page 75 and 76: under the aegis of Western medicine
- Page 77 and 78: the masters of nature ... Instead o
- Page 79: and, during this time, “assimilat
- Page 83 and 84: Darkness. For Said, it was in the p
- Page 85 and 86: In its institutionalized form - fre
- Page 87 and 88: III. Before I continue any further,
- Page 89 and 90: It is an unavoidable fact of life.
- Page 91 and 92: Tarnas refers to those “contradic
- Page 93 and 94: news” of such pervasive and overw
- Page 95 and 96: when writers shrink from that uncer
- Page 97 and 98: Uncertainty and the prolonging of U
- Page 99 and 100: falling away to such a “shift”
- Page 101 and 102: Rhetoric. She would root that “sh
- Page 103 and 104: For my real purpose here then, it i
- Page 105 and 106: Although Hairston is writing about
- Page 107 and 108: of them, I was enlightened. I was p
- Page 109 and 110: All experiences, even the scientifi
- Page 111 and 112: the tendency of that reality to mak
- Page 113 and 114: asking the same question: What had
- Page 115 and 116: and “truth” simply ends where i
- Page 117 and 118: silence we have so often deplored [
- Page 119 and 120: attempting to make room for the exc
- Page 121 and 122: said, I would pose another question
- Page 123 and 124: From [a theoretical] point of view,
- Page 125 and 126: It was this “technical rhetoric
- Page 127 and 128: synonym for doing or making as in
- Page 129 and 130: former I will not really pay much a
as in specific political, ideological, economic, and social<br />
practices" (9). Because of this, while French settlements no<br />
longer occupy the Congo and while English rule no longer holds<br />
sway over India, this does not mean that imperialism does not<br />
persist. While the corporeal presence of those former colonial<br />
sovereigns has passed with time, their influence remains in the<br />
form of ideological perspectives of reality and “truth.” And it<br />
is this influence that surges beneath the surface of culture.<br />
Of this, Said writes:<br />
The main idea is that even as we must fully<br />
comprehend the pastness of the past, there is no just<br />
way in which the past can be quarantined from the<br />
present. Past and present inform each other. […]<br />
[S]carcely any attention has been paid to what I<br />
believe is the privileged role of culture in the<br />
modern imperial experience, and little notice taken<br />
of the fact that the extraordinary global reach of<br />
classical nineteenth- and twentieth-century European<br />
imperialism still casts a considerable shadow over<br />
our own times. (4-5)<br />
For Said, again, while colonies may be a thing of the past, the<br />
imperialistic ideology that decreed that colonial ships sail to<br />
distant shores remains. And I feel that imperialism’s<br />
perspective upon reality and “truth” rises from out of Dewey’s<br />
“quest for certainty”: a campaign to achieve order, control,<br />
and authority over nature and those who dwell within it through<br />
the disregard for and restraint of the “foreign” – flesh and<br />
blood embodiments of all that is uncertain. For Said, the<br />
nineteenth century is crucial to understanding that perspective<br />
because it “climaxed 'the rise of the West’ […]. No other<br />
73
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