The prime minister’s intervention implies he bears the white man’s burden to ‘save’ the brown womanBefore David Cameron launched himself this week into a critique of the English language skills of Muslim women in the UK,he would have done well to hold a tour of Tate Britain’s exhibition Artist and Empire. It’s a deeply unsettling reminder of a past that the British have made an art of half-forgetting.
This is painting by the square metre: enormous canvases to demonstrate the struggle and the glory of British expansionary militarism. It’s a reminder that spreading that pink across the globe was a brutally violent process. But it was the undercurrent of erotic thrill to empire that is even more disturbing. Imperial maps are bordered by large-breasted maidens holding cornucopia brimming with exotic fruits for the conqueror. One portrait of a coy, bare-breasted woman was that of a hostage imprisoned by James Cook in his cabin as part of negotiations with a recalcitrant indigenous people in the Pacific. Empire offered an abundance of available women; in contrast the imperialists’ womenfolk are dressed and presented in domestic settings, and safely established under male control as wives and daughters. Related: David Cameron needs to examine beyond the veil | Remona Aly Related: Cameron 'stigmatising Muslim women' with English language policy Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com