HALLUCINATORY WHITENESS DA.
Mathur, 20 [Ritu, Associate Prof. Poly Sci & Geography @ UT-San Antonio, PhD Poly Sci @ York (Canada), M.Phil Disarmament Studies and M.A. Int’l Relations @ Jawaharlal Nehru University (New Delhi), author of Red Cross Interventions in Weapons Control (Lexington Press, 2017): “Sly Civility and Institutionalized Humiliation,” Chapter 4 in Civilizational Discourses in Weapons Control (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020). ISBN: 978-3-030-44943-8]//AD
The idea of political mastery is further reinforced in the consciousness of the West in the nuclear age with the possession of these weapons even as the use of these weapons evoked a ‘growing sense of moral unease’ and possibility of ‘fear of revenge’ by Others.19 A ‘second form of colonization’ epitomized as racial etiquette gained ground through practices of sly civility in the nuclear order,20 a form of psychological colonization that alters cultural priorities within colonized societies and induces one to generalize that ‘the modern West’ is not just ‘a geographical and temporal entity’ but a ‘psychological category.’21 It encourages a sense of omnipresent, omnipotent, ‘The West is now everywhere, within the West and outside; in structures and in minds.’22 The racial etiquette accompanying this psychological orientation is now subtly imbricated in a new ‘political order’ premised on a ‘norm against noticing’ race,23
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Ikenberry, After Victory, 23. Ikenberry defines ‘political order’ as a governing arrangement comprising of rules, principles and institutions that define the core relationships between states that are party to the order; Short and Kambouri, “Ambiguous universalism,” 270.
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Thus a misplaced emphasis on theory-building through simulation, abstraction and deliberate marginalization of ‘descriptive or historical analysis of the kind that can highlight the racialized practices constitutive of the current global order’ but which are castigated for lacking in rigor.
A sense of vulnerability and tolerance is reinforced with the emergence of a ‘new racial etiquette’ that makes it difficult to be overtly racist.24 Practices of sly civility now cloaked neo-racism, racial etiquette or racial pragmatism at play in the new constitutional order and served to emphasize the need to ‘neutralize the development of race consciousness,’ and to be ‘racially conscious was to be disruptive if not threatening.’25 These practices of sly civility did not represent any serious commitment to antiracism but simply sought to depoliticize race relations by considering them a matter of representation. An effort was made to evade any questions of discrimination and equality by carefully crafting practices of sly civility without giving up on the idea of political mastery. The ‘imperial cycle began anew, with atomic bombing—more palatably referred to as “nuclear testing”—of the Marshall Islands, the Sahara, the Navajo Nation, Maralinga, Moruroa and other colonized spaces.’26