A Case in Point
I happened to write my previous two dispatches, “Entrapment” and “Ethnocide and Ecocide”, while re-reading the preface from Mike Davis’s Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World. As I re-read the book, it struck me that I might use the events he describes as a case study, qualifying my propositions regarding power formations generally and regarding the specific power formation that is imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy.
This dispatch, then, forms a trilogy of sorts that begins with the two aforementioned dispatches and ends here. Many thanks go to conversations with Greg Saunier and Sophie Daws, with whom I re-read the Mike Davis text with me, and with Ylfa Muindi, with whom I read the text the first time around.
During the Late Victorian period three waves of drought and famine killed no less than 30 million people in tropical Africa, Asia, and South America between 1870-1914, “at the precise moment … when [the] labor and products [of tropical humanity] were being dynamically conscripted into a London-centered world economy.” As Mike Davis writes in Late Victorian Holocausts, “Millions died, not outside the ‘modern world system,’ but in the very process of being forcibly incorporated into its economic and political structures.”
Karl Polanyi, writing about the devastation that took place in India in particular during the Late Victorian period, keenly observed that “Indian masses in the second half of the nineteenth century did not die of hunger because they were exploited by Lancashire; they perished in large numbers because the Indian village community had been demolished.”
Over the course of centuries, Indian village communities had become attuned to their ecologies and were fully aware that drought and famine could occur when one least expected it. They had developed a variety of different cultural practices around the conservation and sharing of grain and other foodstuffs in order to prevent mass deaths by malnutrition and starvation. Millions died during the Late Victorian period because these cultural practices had been suppressed by British colonists so that excess grain went to industrial cities like Lancashire instead of being conserved in granaries in India for use by Indian villages the event of drought and famine. Deprived of these cultural practices, Indian village communities had become defenseless against mass deaths by malnutrition and starvation during droughts and famines. This is to say, in other words, that British colonists had ensured that mass deaths were the inevitable result of drought and famine—as one keen British observer remarked at the time, they had devised “a brilliant way to organize famine.”
What happened in India happened all over tropical Africa, Asia, and South America between 1870-1914. White European colonial powers integrated colonized peoples into the “modern world system” by suppressing cultural practices that had, prior to colonization, served to ward off mass deaths by malnutrition and starvation during droughts and famines. Deprived of these cultural practices, colonized peoples all over Africa, Asia, and South America had become defenseless against malnutrition and starvation during droughts and famines.
All this is to say, in other words, that the Late Victorian Holocausts that Mike Davis chronicles were not the inevitable result of the droughts and famines. Rather, they were the inevitable result of the ethnocides that had preceded the droughts and famines. Ethnocide, you will recall, is the extermination of one or more determinate cultures effected by and through the inhibition of the pre-individual processes and the destruction of the supra-individual structures that together constitute the given cultures. The Late Victorian Holocausts that Mike Davis chronicles occurred because White European colonial powers had effectively exterminated cultures that had previously enabled non-White and non-European peoples to collectively endure drought and famine by conserving, sharing, and redistributing resources.
Consider that the Late Victorian Holocausts that Mike Davis chronicles are limited to the 30 to 60 million deaths linked to the post-ethnocide El Niño droughts and famines of 1876–1878, 1896–1897, and 1899–1902. These 30 to 60 million deaths are only a portion of the deaths that can be attributed to the after-effects of ethnocide on the peoples of the colonized world since 1492. Ay, and all these millions of deaths only hint at the many millions more who have suffered and who continue to suffer transgenerational traumas as a result of colonization, ethnocide, mass murder, and mass death by exposure. All of this put together constitutes the makings of the “Third World” which are, concomitantly, the makings of the “First World”. Alternatively, to use the terms currently preferred by Davos Man and his ilk, all of this constitutes the makings of the “developing world” which are, concomitantly, the makings of the “developed world”. The deathly El Niño famines chronicled by Mike Davis only mark an inflection point for all this carnage. The horrors encountered in the apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic scenarios of popular science fiction are pale after-images of the experiences of peoples, White and non-White, who suffered the creation of the developed and developing worlds.
When I write about the need for artful reparations in my Four Essays on Reparations, I am writing about reparations for ethnocide and all of its aftereffects, which cannot be limited to the profits that were made from the exploitation of the developing world. Artful reparations, as I conceive of them, must enable peoples who have suffered ethnocide (i) to grieve the cultures they have lost as a result of ethnocide, (ii) to recover what remains of the cultures they have lost, and (iii) to artfully repair (and/or repurpose) what remains of their lost cultures. Imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy refuses to let us grieve the loss of our cultures and, instead, demands that we celebrate the “progress” occasioned by the extermination of our cultures. Then, to rub salt into the wound, imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy proceeds to employ us to recover those fragments of our lost cultures that are sought after as raw materials for the academic knowledge industry, the cultural tourism industry, and the commercial culture industry. Ay, and it employs us in this regard while frustrating our efforts to recover those fragments that are not sought after raw materials for industry and that might sustain us apart from industry.
Going further, to make sense of what I mean by artful reparations, it is important that I stress the fact that ethnocide is the extermination of determinate cultures. I stress this fact in order to point out that ethnocide begins by making otherwise indeterminate cultures into determinate cultures. In making this point, I am expanding upon the point made in Edward Said's masterwork Orientalism. Said teaches us that determinate “Oriental” cultures did not pre-exist the ethnocidal machinations of White European colonial powers. White European colonial powers bent on ethnocide were initially faced with otherwise indeterminate landscapes composed of many confluent and dynamic cultures that could neither be disentangled from each other nor from Western cultures. White European colonial powers bent on ethnocide had to transform this otherwise indeterminate landscape into a determinate landscape, one composed of fewer segregated and stagnant “Oriental” cultures that could be more easily disentangled from each other and from Western cultures. It was only after segregating groups of different “Oriental” cultures apart from each other and from Western cultures that White European colonial powers could endeavor to exterminate different groups of “Oriental” cultures separately, apart from one another. Similar ethnocidal operations were carried out by Western European colonial powers in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Indeed, the national borders that we see on world maps today are evidence of so many effective ethnocidal operations of this sort, including many such operations carried out by some Europeans against other Europeans.
Artful reparations for ethnocide can only be made by and through the recreation of otherwise indeterminate landscapes composed of many confluent and dynamic cultures, and this re-creation is the aim of the (De-/Re-)Constructing Worlds project. The project asks the following questions:
How can we identify and deconstruct the statements, implements, and environments that have furnished motives, means, and opportunities for ethnocide?
How can we (re-)construct alternative statements, implements, and environments that will furnish us with motives, means, and opportunities to (i) grieve cultures devastated by ethnocide, (ii) recover what remains of these devastated cultures, and (iii) artfully repair (and/or repurpose) what remains of these cultures so as to recreate otherwise indeterminate landscapes composed of confluent and dynamic cultures?
Returning to the devastation that took place in India during the Late Victoria period, we could begin by examining the environments that furnished British colonists with the opportunity to perpetrate the ethnocides that resulted in mass deaths during the droughts and famines of the period. In this regard, it is worth quoting a little bit from the book Saffron, White, and Green by Subhadra Sen Gupta:
India had been invaded many times, and after the Greeks, Afghans, Mongols and Persians, the English were the last in the line. However, there was one big difference between the British and other conquerors like the Mughals. The earlier invaders remained in India and gradually merged with the people; the British never made India their home. They lived in segregated, gated communities, did not mix socially with Indians and would all go back to England with their fortunes and generous pensions. Often there was mutual respect and at times great kindness, but the distances between the ruler and the ruled were always carefully maintained.
The mass deaths that occurred during the droughts and famines of the Late Victorian period in India were opportuned in part by the segregated environments, the gated communities, in which the British colonial agents lived their protected lives, relatively untouched by drought and famine, keeping the starving Indian masses at a distance. Previous conquerors were never eager to destroy Indian cultural practices that protected against drought and famine because they never segregated themselves apart from Indian peoples in the scrupulous manner that was characteristic of the British colonists. Indeed, as Gupta notes in the passage above, previous conquering cultures became increasingly confluent with conquered Indian cultures and conquered Indian cultures became increasingly confluent with conquering cultures. Indeed, the progressive development of increasingly devious, scrupulous, and subtle operations for segregating populations is one of the hallmarks of the ethnocidal power formation that is imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy.
Another hallmark of imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy is its claim that such segregation is necessary in order to protect defenseless White women against the seductive and/or rapacious behavior of non-White peoples. One of the primary justifications that the British claimed for building more and more segregated communities in India was their need to protect White women from being exposed to and contaminated by Indian culture and by Indian men. Segregated communities of colonists increasingly became the norm in India as more and more White women arrived in India, some accompanying their husbands, parents and siblings but others seeking to escape Europe to make a new life for themselves. This is to say, in other words, that a whole host of domineering, paternalistic statements regarding the susceptibility of White women to seduction and rape by non-White men had motivated White European acquiescence to mass deaths in India during the droughts and famines of the Late Victorian period. These statements, which included pornographic images and literatures exoticizing the bodies and sexual practices of non-White peoples, were doubly pernicious because they often simultaneously furnished White men with motives to perpetrate acts of sexual exploitation and violence against non-White others.
Let us discuss one last hallmark of imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy: the construction of means of transport that enable people to go from one place to another without having to care for the places existing between the one and the other. Mike Davis writes in Late Victorian Holocausts that we need to “weigh smug claims about the life-saving benefits of steam transportation and modern grain markets [against the fact that] so many millions, especially in British India, died alongside railroad tracks [and] on the steps of grain depots”. In doing so, one will quickly recognize that the railways in India were not built to enable the equitable distribution of shared resources amongst grain-producing Indian villages in the event of drought and famine. Rather, they were built to get grain from large grain depots to ports from which they could be shipped to the imperial metropole and lucrative grain markets. This is to say, in other words, that the implementation of railway services in India provided the means for White Europeans to acquiesce to the mass deaths in India that occurred during the droughts and famines of the Late Victorian period.
If I was living in India during the El Niño droughts and famines of the Late Victorian period, I would be asking you the following questions:
How might we deconstruct the environments that are segregating British colonists apart from starving Indians? And how might we (re-)construct environments that would integrate the British and the Indians?
How might we deconstruct the statements that are motivating this segregation, including statements that enable British colonists to cite the susceptibility of White women to seduction and/or rape by non-White men? And how might we (re-)construct statements that would motivate integration, including statements enabling us to cite the potential for intimate, caring, and loving relationships amongst peoples of different cultures and races?
How might we deconstruct the implementation of rail services that has enabled the transport of grain from India to the imperial metropole and lucrative grain markets while so many Indians are starving? And how might we (re-)construct railway services so as to implement the sharing of resources amongst dispersed Indian farming villages in the event of drought and famine?
For better or for worse, I am not living in India during the El Niño droughts and famines of the Late Victorian period. I am living in the United States of America during what could be called the Late Davosian period — named after the town, Davos, that hosts the annual World Economic Forum.
Living in America during the Late Davosian period, I am confronted by a cascade of economic, ecological, and public health crises that are devastating all the peoples, cultures, and habitats across the globe that have not yet yielded to the advance of imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy. Confronted with Late Davosian Holocausts fueled by so many climate catastrophes, what questions might I be asking you?
