History as Playground As opposed to Means of Improving the Lot

The Notion of empire, and colonization is inescapable. It is not resonating through the emotion of guilt. But my sense of justice gets its exercise. A desire exists to arrive at the very least a thesis if not an entire body part of work that raises all of the essential questions about what it means to be connected to an empire, what it means to be at both of its ends and how any one person accounts for their role. Moralism creeps into the mix and just arrests my center of gravity (i.e., kills creativity) to that of the political organizer (because action is what matters, not expressing moral sentiments (which are often the height of inaction, but still inaction).

But something got...saved...from the burnout that preoccupation with human rights and the like brings. A month ago my conscious mind with eyes came across a book review in the NY Times. A new one about the British empire. Its photographs of the functionaries working under the british viceroy struck me. There was an interesting shot of an interacial cricket team (in Bombay me thinks). Every player seemed to take extra care in grooming themselves and their handle bar mustaches. Such a dustbin of history (although we briefly revived the mustache in the seventies, most notabley with Oakland Athletics Relief picture, Rollie Fingers) The ministrial quality of it! While idling away at work later that week, drawing cartoons, that quality appeared on the page. It was very similar to my previous drawings of African Americans--more exactly, imitations of racial imitations of African Americans. So the idea occurred to put together a huge series of cartoon drawings (no gifted visual artist is writing these words, so only flirt with your breath) using imperialism as the grist. To juxtapose that with historical and colonial and post colonial liteary readings might bear interesting fruit (and hopefully serve no educational or moral purpose). Stay tuned.

To a very high degree that is what the notion of Empire has become: a very quaint cartoon that has no relationship, in the minds of most people, to contemporary life . The cartoonization however goes back , at least, to the 19th and early 20th century in the vast array of children´s literature from the UK which depicted quasi colonial personnel as merely some folksy or wise fellow assisting or playfully antagonising the protagonist. In every day society and popular culture, the word ¨empire¨is used as hyperbole or another kind of figure of speech: ¨the New England Patriots Empire¨ (dynasty), the ¨Hannah Montana Empire¨ or the American Empire...woops. Well, if you look the word up in the dictionary that last example is no figure of speech. Does it matter? For all intents and purposes, it does not matter to most. But I digress.