A Freedom of Ideas Cori Di Biase

In Season 2 - our FOUNDATIONS series - we’ll examine European philosophers from the 17th through the 19th centuries, to see how their views have shaped and defined our own… whether we realize it or not.
Having examined the mechanisms of imperialism and “mind-changing” more closely in the last three episodes, we’ll pan out a bit to understand these ideas in a larger historical and philosophical context. First, we’ll seek to understand what exactly Imperialist thinkers, like Mill, intended to occur in the course of these processes.
Next, we’ll discuss the relationships between Civil Society and Mind as two highly complex systems that ultimately come to define and craft one another, cyclically, and continually, over time. Accepting that symbiotic, mutually defining relationship, we’ll re-frame our conversation about how Imperialism “changes minds” to how it manipulates Civil Society as a means of changing individual minds across an entire society.
Finally, we’ll examine the similarities between Colonialism, Imperialism, and other seismic changes to civil society, including those experienced during rapid conversions to authoritarian government… and speculate a bit further on the longer-term effects of this spread of the European worldview via Imperialism, which we’ve likened to the spread of a noxious weed across the “intellectual environment” of the globe.

In Season 2 - our FOUNDATIONS series - we’ll examine European philosophers from the 17th through the 19th centuries, to see how their views have shaped and defined our own… whether we realize it or not.
Today, we’ll finish our look at Bernard Cohn’s COLONIALISM AND ITS FORMS OF KNOWLEDGE: THE BRITISH IN INDIA Cohn uses the critical style of Michel Foucault to examine how the English expressions of power in India often produced outcomes they did not anticipate - even, or especially, when their intentions were “good”.
We’ll begin with Cohn on the English effort to “clarify” law and legal codes in India. While they intended to do so in a way that “arrived at the truth” of Indian law, what they did was to make Indian law fundamentally English; fundamentally European. Thus, regardless of the English intentions, their activities cause another major change in Indian Civil Society, which, in turn, set the stage for ongoing changes to individual Indian minds.
From there we’ll look at some of Cohn’s contentions that are both not quite so well proven in the text (IMHO), and which, as with Foucault, it will be somewhat harder to know what to “do” with. But which are important and likely profoundly important questions, nonetheless.
All of which results in what will simply have to pass for a “rant” – a rhetorical rant, at that - by the bookish and retiring standards of AFOI, in which we explore what it means that, in the centuries since Elizabeth the First, many of us in the “western” (ahem) world have gone from being subjects living under a government, to data sets that factor (more or less) in the operations of government.
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In Season 2 - our FOUNDATIONS series - we’ll examine European philosophers from the 17th through the 19th centuries, to see how their views have shaped and defined our own… whether we realize it or not.
Today, a brief treatment of a point made in Bernard Cohn’s COLONIALISM AND ITS FORMS OF KNOWLEDGE: THE BRITISH IN INDIA. Cohn talks about the way the English taught and used a hyper-simplified version of Indian language whose only purpose was to allow British Imperialists to give orders to “menials” under their command.
By teaching English nobility who were new to India a rudimentary series of commands – speech as simple as the ability to say “plate” declaratively, knowing that would pass for the more three-dimensionally human communication “bring me a plate” (or, perhaps, even “PLEASE bring me a plate”, but that’s likely asking far too much) - the vast majority of actual communication between the English and native Indian people was reduced to a purely functional form that allowed for little or no actual exchange of ideas, interests, or anything at all the required nuance or complexity.
Put differently, the practical structure of communication in India practically assured that neither the English nor the Indians could ever come to a point of understanding the other as compelling, intricate, real human beings. An attempt to facilitate communication ended up stifling the exchange of anything at all like actual meaning.

In Season 2 - our FOUNDATIONS series - we’ll examine European philosophers from the 17th through the 19th centuries, to see how their views have shaped and defined our own… whether we realize it or not.
Today, and next time, we’ll look at Bernard Cohn’s COLONIALISM AND ITS FORMS OF KNOWLEDGE: THE BRITISH IN INDIA. Cohn uses the critical style of Michel Foucault to examine how the English expressions of power in India often produced outcomes they did not anticipate - even, or especially, when their intentions were “good”.
 Chalk this up in part to trying to manipulate the interface of two hyper complex systems (civil society and individual mind… more on all that in a few weeks), as well as to the fact that it is by definition impossible to do anything “good” for a people upon whom you have imposed a violent and coercive system like Imperialism.
But the “Foucauldian” point here remains compelling. As we’ll see, today, when the English tried to “clarify” the way language was used in India, ostensibly in a way that would ensure Indian language remained as true to itself as possible, they in fact made fundamental changes that, in turn, rippled out through Indian society and mind. While trying to make India more “truly Indian”, the English made it… well, more English. Next time, we’ll see a nearly identical change made in Indian law.

In Season 2 - our FOUNDATIONS series - we’ll examine European philosophers from the 17th through the 19th centuries, to see how their views have shaped and defined our own… whether we realize it or not.
Today, we have a quick(esque) episode on Michel Foucault, who is not at all a "foundational" philosopher, but who set the tone for the work of Bernard Cohn, who we’ll be talking about on our next two episodes.
Also, on this episode, I try my hand at a bit of lite-hearted banter to kick off the show. Lite-hearted banter is strangely difficult for me, it seems. But perhaps it’s a matter of choosing better subjects to bant upon.

In Season 2 - our FOUNDATIONS series - we’ll examine European philosophers from the 17th through the 19th centuries, to see how their views have shaped and defined our own… whether we realize it or not.
Having contended that Imperialism served to “change the minds” of much of the world – meaning, to re-make the human understanding of how the mind operates in relationship to the world – for the next three episodes we’ll talk about how, exactly, that mind-changing took place.
We’ll begin by discussing “Indian Boarding Schools” in the United States as one of a number of brutal, genocidal practices used by Imperialists in native or indigenous communities. Indigenous communities generally suffered far more explicit cruelty than victims of Imperialism in more settled societies. This, in itself, is a further example of European “rational chauvinism” – the belief that peoples exist on a scale of “maturity”, rationality, and civilizational quality.
In this all-too-brief look at these brutal institutions, we’ll see how their operations sought to change the minds of native youth in America, and the broader impacts these “schools” had on the communities and civil society of the families that experienced them.
Sources for toady’s show include:
Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Report
Federal Indian Boarding School System Intentionally Sought to Destroy Native Families
“Kill the Indian, save the man”: Remembering the stories of Indian boarding schools
Survivors Of Native American Boarding Schools Discuss Dark History In The US
Stolen Children | Residential School survivors speak out