An Addendum: “Colonizing Space” — It Really Is That Bad
Several days ago I wrote a post called “‘Colonizing Space’ is a Dirty Word: Stop Using It,” which sparked a handful of amusing debates. io9, for instance, essentially plagiarized me on Facebook by not providing attribution for the problematic I initially set up. I say that jokingly, of course. The more interesting response, however, came in the form of a refutation by Larry of OF Blog of the Fallen. His post, and the comments to it, will be the focus of this addendum. Larry’s primary refutation is on the grounds of etymology. When one looks at the creation of the word “colonization” and its roots in Latin, it does, in fact, appear to have a fairly benign usage (“to inhabit, cultivate, frequent, practice, tend, guard, respect” refers to the Latin root, colere). The modern definition, however, is only benign if you take it literally. To colonize means to settle in a colony (a colony being a group of people who have settled far away from home, but maintain ties with their home country). When taken at face value, that definition appears to have no negative connotations. What exactly is negative about settling far way from home? That’s where the problems arise. Colonization never involved settling uninhabited areas (unless we count the two poles in the mix; but we’d then have to consider the impact on the environment, which humans are adept at destroying). It always referred to the seizure of native lands from native peoples, almost always by excessive aggression, and almost always alongside the formation of racist ideologies and an intensive “civilizing” mission which sought to eradicate indigenous culture, indigenous people, or, more likely, both. Even when one looks at the time period in which the root form emerged, the processes which it referred to were not benign, but in fact involved the same colonialist practices I’ve just described, usually followed by violence in the form of war. When one looks at the barbarian tribes the Romans sought to squash, it’s hard not to see the precursors of what would become European colonialism (and American imperialism). And when one looks farther back in time (the ancient Egyptians, perhaps), one sees that colonization has always been tied to its good friend, conquest. To suggest, then, that “to colonize” can, in fact, be benign is to wash away the extensive history of human aggression towards other human beings which is tied up into the word’s very history. It matters not whether the word was invented with a benign definition, since what it always refers to is not a benign process. Taken farther, the word itself is as much a part of colonialist suppression of complicity as we are seeing today in Mike Huckabee’s absurd claim that Obama’s supposed anti-British-colonialism is somehow a bad thing. Colonialism never wants to be responsible for its own actions. We know this because we’ve seen the U.S. government repeatedly fight against reparations for the various Native American tribes we’ve decimated, stolen from, irradiated, and so on, even to the point of denying some of them the right to be tribes in legal terms. This is a never-ending process of suppression, because complicity means something very troublesome for the human “soul.” But perhaps Larry’s greatest failing is when he moves away from the deep past to a more immediate one (the same colonialist past he accuses me of appropriating “colonization” for): I have to question here if his passion got in the way of his intellect, as with that single sentence, there is the appearance of a curt dismissal of the transformative aspects of colonialism. One might be pardoned if s/he is thinking at this point that Duke is coming close to a paternalist attitude of having to defend the besmirched colonized peoples’ honors whenever that nasty “colonize” word is employed. I do not believe for a moment that is what he means to do, but it can be rather insulting to some to see their own hybrid cultures, which are not clones of the mother country but which instead reflect the complex, myriad ways in which different ethnic groups acted upon one another to transform the colony into something that wasn’t wholly a product of the purported motherland. Perhaps I’m insufficiently Cherokee in my heritage to feel all the outrage conducted upon my people by my other people, the Irish colonists/settlers who moved into the Tennessee River Valley over two centuries ago. All I know is that there was quite a bit of intermarriage and exchanging of foods, products, and ideas between the groups; exploitation certainly took place, but it was far from the only means of cultural interaction. There is a great deal of academic research out there on hybridity and the ways in which indigenous people manipulate culture and so forth for their own uses. Larry’s desire to focus on the transformative qualities of colonialism, however, is misplaced, not least because his rhetoric paints a rather disturbing picture of indigeneity by nearly dismissing the extensive levels of subjugation, extermination, cultural annihilation, etc. in exchange for a softer, if not sanitized, vision of indigenous interactions with colonists. His argument is akin to suggesting that we should focus more on the transformative aspects of a woman’s interactions with her rich, but physically abusive, nearly-rapist husband. Could we say that some good might come out of that relationship? Sure, but that would be a sanitized version of reality, since it gives far too much credit to the side of the story which wouldn’t have existed if the first side had never occurred. For indigenous peoples, this analogy holds true. Nobody asks to be colonized. Nobody asks to have their lands stolen, their people exploited, their cultures suppressed, or their rights denied. These are things that precede all those transformative qualities Larry wants to talk about. Should we talk about them? Certainly, but never without acknowledging that their very existence is predicated upon the destructive impact of colonialism. Even to use Larry’s mention of the Cherokee is