Colonization Never Ended
Dabashi is useful and relevant reference here. White Mask/Brown Skin or something like that.
Jean-Paul Sartre 1961
Preface to Frantz Fanon’s “Wretched of the Earth”
NOT so very long ago, the earth numbered two thousand million inhabitants: five hundred million men, and one thousand five hundred million natives. The former had the Word; the others had the use of it. Between the two there were hired kinglets, overlords and a bourgeoisie, sham from beginning to end, which served as go-betweens. In the colonies the truth stood naked, but the citizens of the mother country preferred it with clothes on: the native had to love them, something in the way mothers are loved. The European élite undertook to manufacture a native élite. They picked out promising adolescents; they branded them, as with a red-hot iron, with the principles of western culture, they stuffed their mouths full with high-sounding phrases, grand glutinous words that stuck to the teeth. After a short stay in the mother country they were sent home, whitewashed. These walking lies had nothing left to say to their brothers; they only echoed. From Paris, from London, from Amsterdam we would utter the words ‘Parthenon! Brotherhood!’ and somewhere in Africa or Asia lips would open ... thenon! ... therhood!’ It was the golden age.
... The European ´elite undertook to manufacture a native ´elite. They
picked out promising adolescents; they branded them, as with a red-hot
iron, with the principles of western culture, they stuffed their mouths full with
high-sounding phrases, grand glutinous words that stuck to the teeth.
After a short stay in the mother country they were sent home, white-
washed. These walking lies had nothing left to say to their brothers; they
only echoed. From Paris, from London, from Amsterdam we would utter
the words ‘Parthenon! Brotherhood!’ and somewhere in Africa or Asia lips
would open ... thenon! ... therhood!’ It was the golden age.