Darwinist premise in the Orientalist construction of the âOtherâ - JPCS

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Journal of Postcolonial Cultures and Societies ISSN No. 1948-1845 (Print); 1948-1853 (Electronic) suggests that the Europeans were predestined to become ‘‘the winners of the world’’ because of their exceptional cultural ethos, and the non-Europeans were predestined to be ‘‘the losers of the world’’ because of their cultural inferiority. Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997) suggests that physical and biological environments determine the courses of the evolution of human behavior as much as they determine the evolution of species. The triumph of the West is predestined by the specific climate and geographical settings of Europe that give rise to the specific path of human evolution there. Cultural determinism and evolutionism are back. (Hung 276) Hence, history in the Western sense was not a class struggle, as Marx asserted, it was an eternal struggle for existence between races, and politics had to be based upon the direct application of the laws of nature and struggle. The strongest asserts its will. In short, history is the history of the triumphant. Nonetheless, we need to be aware of the difference in the ideological contexts in which they were embedded. While Darwinian evolutionism at the turn of the twentieth century was used to justify the conquest and annihilation of the inferior races, the postwar modernization school was enmeshed with the ideology that less modernized societies could be elevated to modernity by accepting the domination and guidance of the advanced Western countries. Consider the following excerpt from a letter written by Charles Darwin to W. Graham, July 3, 1881: I could show fight on natural selection having done and doing more for the progress of civilization than you seem inclined to admit…. The more civilized so-called Caucasian races have beaten the Turkish hollow in the struggle for existence. Looking to the world at no very distant date, what an endless number of the lower races will have been eliminated by the higher civilized races throughout the world. Darwin repeated this sentiment in his book The Descent of Man, he speculated, “At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace the savage races throughout the world” (178) . However, Darwin was not alone in his racist ideology. Thomas Huxley, the man most responsible for advancing Darwinian doctrine argued that “No rational man, cognizant of the facts, believes that the average negro is the equal, still less the superior, of the white man… The highest places in the hierarchy of civilization will assuredly not be within the reach of our dusky cousins, though it is by no means necessary that they should be restricted to the lowest” (20-1). H. F. Osborn, a prominent American anthropologist of the first half of the twentieth century proposed an anthropological assumption of evolutionary hierarchy in which blacks are placed at the bottom, yellows and reds somewhere in the middle, and whites on top. He argues that “the genus Homo is subdivided into three absolutely distinct stocks, which … popularly known as the Caucasian, the Mongolian and the Negroid…The standard of intelligence of the average adult Negro is similar to that of the eleven-year-old youth of the species Homo sapiens.”(129) ‘Darwinist premise in the Orientalist construction of the “Other”,’ Mohamed Hamoud Kassim Al- Mahfedi and Venkatesh P JPCS Vol 3, No 1, 2012 10
Journal of Postcolonial Cultures and Societies ISSN No. 1948-1845 (Print); 1948-1853 (Electronic) Early Victorian imperialism was motivated largely by a strong Christian influence. The East India Company may have been based on exploitation, but it carried missionaries with it. The Christian base of early Victorian imperialism underwent a subtle change as the nineteenth century went on. The Encyclopedia Britannica says: This new period of imperialism at the end of the 19th century found its spiritual support in…social Darwinism, in all the theories glorifying power and success, which had swept over Europe…Racial theories seemed to give to this new attitude, which was in opposition to all traditional [i.e. Christian] values of morality, a justification by "science" and "nature," the belief in which was almost becoming the dominant faith of the period (122). Thus social Darwinism became the driving force behind imperialism. Instead of "taking the gospel to the heathen," the English came to be more motivated by a feeling of racial superiority, and felt the need to control "primitive peoples." So there were two motives behind colonization – the older, Christian motive and the newer motive based on social Darwinism. This is important to note because it shows that ideas have consequences. The idea of Darwinian evolution introduced a completely exploitative form of imperialistic control over "inferior races." The very idea of "inferior races" comes directly out of Darwin's theory. Therefore, think of the historical consequences that are the direct and logical results of such fatal propositions and premeditated Orientalist/colonialist premises which cause a millions Algerians, millions Africans, millions of dispossessed and displaced refugees from Middle East, Asia, Africa, Caribbean and crushed races all over the globe. The Western philosophy of the superiority of the white race over its “inferior” and “subhuman” various “Other” led to the extermination of millions of Africans, Asians and other minorities across the universe. It is also significant to note that some of the Crusaders and others who used force to further their creeds in the name of God were acting in concord with the Oreintalist/colonialist desire. The Christian missionaries acted against the word of God and played religico- political role in the Orientalist/colonialist project. The struggle for power, survival of the fittest and all that did not confine to Orientalist scholarship, hegemonic policy, imperial and colonial encroachment, but misused religion as an ideological apparatus of what used to be called civilizing mission and redeeming salvation. The teachings of Osborn, Huxley, Darwin, Spencer and others like them, however, are completely consistent with the teachings of the Orientalsits/colonialists in the same period. Indeed, social Darwinism has provided the scientific substructure for some of the most significant atrocities in human history. For evolution to succeed, it is as crucial that the unfit die as the fittest survive. The concept of evolution demands death and “exterminations of the brutes”. On another plane, Orientalist/colonialist thought has observed an interrelationship between political economy and biology as trading partners of long standing. ‘Darwinist premise in the Orientalist construction of the “Other”,’ Mohamed Hamoud Kassim Al- Mahfedi and Venkatesh P JPCS Vol 3, No 1, 2012 11
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Darwinist premise in the Orientalist construction of the âOtherâ - JPCS

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Darwinist premise in the Orientalist construction of the âOtherâ - JPCS