The evil "colonial", The West and the participation mystique

And I gazed out at the world from my cave at my newcomers -- but they were comers whom I'd seen before. They all had matted hair like that of a lion, and they'd come to see my in my cave in order to write notes about me -- the exotic creature that I am!



And I engaged them with the discourse of my civilisation:



"Who are you, and where do you come from? And once you leave what sorts of notes will you write about me? Will you, for instance, reference my one eye, and note about my eating habits and my proximity to the band of brothers?" I enquired.



"What kinds of ideas would you like to take from me?"



But this visitor was like the one before, and even more sullen.



"My name is Odysseus," he said. "But you can't mention that. It is essentialising. The point I'm trying to stab home is that I insist that you refer to me and mine as "Nobody" -- and there could be penalties for disobeying my instructions!"



He was like the one before, and the one before him, all visiting my cave with the same sullen assertion on their lips, intent on having their colonial adventure. What good was it sharing with them my sheep and wine when their propensity to stab me in the eye was overwhelming?



This one would soon be leaving, too, for having supped, he would be finding new hyperactivity, and I, on the other hand, would be getting quite sleepy.



I covered my eye, as my grandmother and greatgrandmother had learned to do before me. The stabbing would soon be coming, but they couldn't help it -- that is what those "Nobodies" tended to do!



"Come quickly, come quickly, my brothers! Nobody is stabbing me again!" I called out in my fitful sleep. But no-one came.



It was a good thing, I consoled myself, despite my sorrow, that at least I had avoided naming names, and had thus committing the academic sin of positing Western society as a "monolith". Nonetheless, in regard to its guilty self-awareness of its colonial past and what I represented to it as a young "colonial", those of the West had expressed that they knew Western society to be "one".