E 341 Lecture Notes - John Dunmore Lang, Eurocentrism
Document Summary
Ania loomba"s essay indicates the problems of defining it indicating instead the range of its meanings. Conventional, literal definition of colonization: a body of people from one geographical area creating a settlement or colony in a new locality but maintaining connections with parent state and remaining politically subject to it. Parent state = metropole; occupied land = colony. Colonization locked the original inhabitants and the newcomers into the most complex and traumatic relationships in human history. Colonization devalued a nation"s past, culture, history, progress in favor of a preference for eurocentric norms, customs, language, culture. Unforming" or re-forming" the existing communities and practices. The colonialist, while committing these atrocities against the natives and territories of the colonies, convinces himself that he stands on high moral grounds. The colonized are savages in need of education and rehabilitation; their culture is.
