David Cannadine's Attempt to Respond to Edward Said

At the moment I am reading British Imperial History for an article on the British Press and the Mexican Revolution. A recent book has created waves of debates in this area. David Cannadine’s _Ornamentalism_ is an attempt to respond to Edward Said _Orientalism_ about 22 years later, and just months before Said’s death. These are some preliminary thoughts about this book:

David Cannadine have tried to put forth a new ideological parameter similar to Said’s (actually, in contrast) _Orientalism_, in order to generate a new series of scholarly research that prove the centrality of social hierarchy in the Imperialist British perception of the oversea subaltern. This new analytical core (not so new really) is supposed to replace the centrality of race and difference, emphasized by those who prefer the view from the margins as opposed to the view from the imperial center. Is natural that Cannadine would follow the view from the center because this is the perception more familiar to him—not the periphery (a review of his academic and professional life). The starting point of his analysis would necessarily affect his conclusions.

That David Cannadine’s brought to our attention that ‘for the British their overseas realms were at least as much about Sameness as they were about difference,” (4) that the British ranked dark-skinned peoples also on “notions of metropolitan-peripheral analogy and Sameness ,” (5) and that the “British contemplated the unprecedented numbers massed together in their new industrial cities” and “tended to compare these great towns at home with ‘dark continent’ overseas, and equate the workers in factories with coloured peoples abroad” (5) is not a sanction to dismiss the centrality of race and difference.

On Sameness. Even though the imperialists partially acknowledged the humanity of the subaltern it did so in varying degrees following a hierarchical mental construction. In such a hierarchy they allocated the highest level of humanity to themselves, a purported pure white race, and following thus was Sameness applied according to the level in which the subaltern was in the racial hierarchy. For example, the lighter the skin and the more similar was the people to the physical characteristics of the idealized “white race,” the more likely the British considered them the same. Of course, they consider also the cultural traits and the power they had.

I will continue with this subject soon--after posting about our research/vacation trip to Puerto Rico, Wuao!