Projections and comparisons

 One of the things about those brought up under colonialism during my time was that we had an extremely high level of education, but we generally underestimated it and assumed that people in the more industrialized countries must be more up to date and in the know. In some ways this was true. Our educational system was strictly disciplinarian and old-fashioned. We also had the idea that knowledge was objective — including that is was capable of being objectively measured and ascertained.

The writer I studied for my PhD generally aimed his books way over his readers’ heads and seemed unable to do otherwise. My memoir, similarly, makes the same mistake.

I have to tell you, it was a weird realization that I was projecting my intelligence into the kind of people who are brought up write poor essays. We don’t normally entertain the view that there are broad social and cultural blocs of consciousness that form “identities” in relation to other broad blocs — but now I am sure this is true.

STAY SANE AND SAVAGE Gender activism, intellectual shamanism