In my TC on Africa we spent the first two weeks discussing the definition of words like post-modern, colonial, neo-colonial, master narrative, and imperialism. We eventually understood that these words have an overwhelming variety of interpretations, and it is up to us to form an educated opinion on what each word means. I believe that the word imperialism is the most relevant to this DB; imperialism is a term that is generally understood as one independent country’s dominance over another “independent” country.
A symbolic photo of American imperialism.
With ease the term can be extended to “animals” and “humans”- every species that falls these categories are supposedly autonomous beings because they can “think” for themselves (the intellectual/moral scale that one weighs them by is irrelevant really), however, one species- the “animal”- is always the less of the “two”. Imperialism, in its literal and extended deff. is a product of the following:
According to Linnaeus’ taxonomy Homo sapiens fall under the kingdom Animalia; this means that “we”, Homo sapiens, are animals. Having reasonably drawn this conclusion, one is must ask why “we” continue to draw a distinction between “ourselves” and “animals”. Some may think this is taking things too far, but I would argue that our insistence on this distinction is similar to the English man’s bigoted insistence on distinguishing himself from Indians. One can see an example for this in Orwell’s essay, “Shooting an Elephant”. Orwell continually distinguishes between himself, “the people”, and “the elephant”: “We began questioning the people as to where the elephant had gone and, as usual, failed to get any definite information” (219). This distinction, done for literary effect, communicates the racist, imperialistic mindset of the English occupation of India; it establishes the Indians as “an other”, despite their relatedness to Englishmen.
Moreover, this distinction- predominately when applied to animals- encourages an egocentric view of the world. In the short story “Very like a Whale” by someone-whose-name-i-don’t-remember-and-cant-find-on-google the author emphasis how anthropomorphism is wrong. In a nutshell, the author (a boy? A girl? Maybe both or neither?!) argues that anthropomorphism robes a wild “animal” – for here on referred to as a “being”- of it’s majestic presence.
The story draws its moral from the way people sta at a beached whale.
Which means, though I agree with what “Eleanor Frere Fenn [asserts,] ‘nothing could more effectually tend to infuse benevolence than the teaching of little ones early to consider every part of nature as endured with feeling.’” 174 I disagree with the way that a lot of “people” go about teaching this. Additionally, to depict animals as being similar, in any way, to humans encourages a mindset that humans are superior. By “our” standards “they” are this and “they” are that. By “our” standards “they” can’t do this and “they” can’t do that. When one begins to believe themselves superior, they begin to believe that they need to “help” the lesser being (be it “animal” or race) to become civilized and domesticated. When they start on this quest of civilizing the masses they begin to embrace cruelty, because dominance goes hand in hand with cruelty.
In the “Hurt Hawk” there is a verse that discusses various beings’ understanding of “the wild God” (215). This verse plays into my arguments that “animals” and “humans” are not that much different from each other (having come from the same place) and that there remains a group of “humans” who will never accept this fact. The verse is, “You do not know him, you communal people, or you have forgotten him;/Intemperate and savage, the hawk remembers him;/Beautiful and wild, the hawks, and men that are dying, remember him” (215). To me the God figure that Jeffers is referring to would be nature, because a hawk cannot remember/worship what is, in my opinion, a manmade idol. Nature would be the place we all come from that I mentioned above. The communal people is a representation of the people who will always remain close minded.
The three elements in this photo- earth, water, and sun- have given every being, every earthling life.
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