Your Inner Adolf
A rather terrifying big of imagery proposes the concept of an inner Adolf Hitler. Hitler is a pervasive figure throughout the text, implicated as imagery of the worst nightmare imaginable that also happens to be dismissed too much as an anomaly to make us feel better:
“it would be worthwhile to study clinically, in detail, the steps taken by Hitler and Hitlerism and to reveal to the very distinguished, very humanistic, very Christian bourgeois of the twentieth century that without his being aware of it, he has a Hitler inside him, that Hitler inhabits him, that Hitler is his demon”
Blame the Bourgeoisie
Blame the bourgeoisie for what, you ask? For everything, according to the author. Or, if not quite everything, much of the big fails from history. Not that he is wrong, mind you, but one cannot help when reading the imagery that supports this contention that in addition to conservative upper class there are certainly at least some gullible proletarians, a huge chunk of the ecclesiastical class, and assorted other class strata that contributed to helping the bourgeoisie maintain their lack of interest:
“Whether one likes it or not, the bourgeoisie, as a class, is condemned to take responsibility for all the barbarism of history, the tortures of the Middle Ages and the Inquisition, warmongering and the appeal to the raison d’Etat, racism and slavery, in short everything against which it protested in unforgettable terms at the time when, as the attacking class, it was the incarnation of human progress.”
A Reply to M. Caillois
M. Callois is one of the predominant villains of the work. He is the writer made infamous for suggesting that “the only ethnography is white.” Or, to put it in plainer language: everything of any importance to civilization traces its discovery back to white cultures. The author responds thusly and with insistent parallel construction:
“Of course, there remain a few small facts that resist this doctrine. To wit, the invention of arithmetic and geometry by the Egyptians. To wit, the discovery of astronomy by the Assyrians. To wit, the birth of chemistry among the Arabs. To wit, the birth of chemistry among the Arabs. To wit, the appearance of rationalism in Islam at a time when Western thought had a furiously pre-logical cast to it.”
The (Unintended) Boomerang Effect
What is the effect of throwing a boomerang? That is to say, the intended effect of throwing correctly is that it returns. The key point here is that the return it intended. Within the context of the evidentiary support of his premise, therefore, the conclusion really isn’t justified. A boomerang effect should, by definition, not become a surprise. Despite this flaw in reasoning, the author’s point is clear and disturbing:
“Colonization, I repeat, dehumanizes even the most civilized man; that colonial action, colonial enterprise, colonial conquest, founded on contempt for native man and justified by this contempt, inevitably tends to modify those who undertake it; that the colonizer, who, to give himself a clear conscience, gets used to seeing the other as the beast, trains himself to treat him as a beast, objectively tends to transform himself into a beast. It is this result, this boomerang effect of colonization that I wanted to point out.”
