A Reflection on Empire

Through the theme of Empire and its Ruin, Humanities Core has altered my view and understanding of power and the ways in which people utilize and resist it. Empire is not just the entity of a nation. An empire can be a country, yes, but it can also be an idea. Racecraft, gender, and sex all fall under such a category because they dominate the minds of others and spread through oppressive practices just like nations physically dominate those who are weaker than them and spread their influence through war and violence. My view of resistance has also been changed through this class. I used to believe that resistance could only exist through the practices of protest and violent revolution. However, those are only two out of many methods. The Inca were master resisters, finding ways to keep their culture alive by adapting and meshing their own beliefs and practices with Spanish ones. An example is the way they adorned and surrounded the Virgin Mary, a Catholic symbol, with traditionally Inca symbols to use her as a personification of the Pachamama, the head goddess. Another method of resistance was illustrated in Shakespeare's The Tempest in which Professor Lewis taught that language is a partner of empire, but language can also be used to critique empire. Caliban, through usage of the language Prospero taught him, rains insults upon Prospero and uses his words to establish his own identity separate from the one thrust upon him by his oppressor.

I now understand that Empires operate on inflicting fear/violence over a weaker community and binaries. By having possession of power and weapons, Empires use force and cruelty to make people submit to their authority such as during the Cambodian genocide when the Khmer Rouge murdered millions of innocent people in order to create a "utopian" agrarian society. In life like in the humanities, there is no black or white, only shades of grey. This means that while Empires try to create the view that people are either civilized or savage, the reality is that there are no binding categories to place people into. Supposedly civilized people (Europeans) can and have behaved savagely (ex. the institution and practice of slavery). It is wrong to say that just because someone is educated or white that they are better people. Human beings are much more complex than that and cannot be simply understood in terms of binaries. Binaries are used to categorize and divide people; they are nothing but tools of oppression.

In conclusion, Empire never really ends. Like we learned from Thomas Cole's paintings during fall quarter, it is cyclical. However, this doesn't mean that we have to submit to everything that this seemingly all powerful force inflicts upon us and we don't have to go up in flames with it when it is inevitably destroyed. We can fight back. We can use organizations and practices that are already in establishment (or even part of what makes the Empire function) to our own advantage to further our own causes. At the end of the day, Empire is nothing without the people living within and affected by it every day; it does not belong to the leaders, it belongs to us. Humanities Core has taught me that I always have a voice that can be used to shape the world I live in for the better. Even if that voice is muffled at times, it can't ever be silenced.