way for independence, was not a nationalist struggle. Quite simply, peasants sought to reclaim the arable land monopolized by white farmers. But rumors of blacks banding together and taking traditional oaths in the forest, along with sporadic attacks on the estates, were sufficient to allow whatever racial hysteria the settlers had held down to burst to the The current interest in a redecorated imperial pastfits snugly with a time when America (selectively defined)feels good about itself andflaunts its right to step abroadfrom a position of unaccommodating strength. surface. Rumors about the most barbarous voodoo rites sent shudders all the way to London, where the Colonial Secretary, in the safety of his office, wrote: “I would suddenly see a shadow fall across the page—the horned shadow of the Devil.” The settlers intuited that paradise was closing down. And their rage was unbridled.- Huxley, Robert Ruark, C.T. Stoneham, C. Wilson, C. Lander, Stuart Cloete, M.M. Kaye, Neil Sheraton. . .a throng of settler writers and settler sympathizers poured out a mixed brew of fiction, “history,” “anthropology,” and “ethnopsychology," that for its venom is almost without equal in the annals of twentieth-century colonialism. In the African make-up there is really no such thing as Iqve, kindness, or gratitude, as we know them, because they have lived all their lives, and their ancestors’ lives, in an atmosphere of terror and violence. There is no proper “love” between man and woman, because the woman is bought for goats and is used as a beast of burden. There is no gratitude, because it would never occur to them to give anything to anybody else, and so they have no way of appreciating kindness or gifts from others. They lie habitually, because to lie is the correct procedure, or else some enemy might find a way to do them damage if they tell the truth. They have no sensitivity about inflicting pain, or receiving pain, because their whole religion is based on blood and torture of animals and each other. These insights from Peter McKenzie, the hero of Ruark’s Something of Value, are a far from eccentric expression of white hysteria. No matter how much Reagan may enjoy bandying phrases like “overt covert aid, ” the day is past when an empire can brazenly announce itself as such. The closest it can come is to don the clothes of a bygone power. When the dust had settled on the six- year revolt, one million peasants had been confined to “fortified villages,” 90,000 sent to detention camps, and there were somewhere over 13,000 dead. Of those killed, 11,500 were alleged Mau Mau members, along with 1,800 Africans accused by Mau Maus of collaborating with the settlers. Yet only sixty-three white soldiers and thirty-two white civilians died. ^6 outcry in the Kenyan press at Pollack’s glossy revival of the proprietary-settler look was partly touched off by the memory of those Mau Mau battles to reclaim the land. But to some Western intellectuals such protests smack, in Conor Cruise O’Brien’s phrase, of “historical infantilism.” In an Observer column entitled “Why the Wailing Ought to Stop,” O’Brien vilified those he considers belatedly afflicted by the “the collective self-pity of former subject peoples.” This reprimand was occasioned by the Anglo-Indian novelist Salman Rushdie’s masterly dismembering of the whole phenomenon of Raj nostalgia. But O’Brien’s point was a more general one. Third Worlders should recognize that colonialism was back then, a different generation’s affair. Finally, let bygones by bygones. To subscribe to O’Brien’s quietism would be to shrug off Colonial nostalgia as an innocent, if sentimental, recollection of things past. But paradoxically, the real focus of nostalgia is never so much then as it is now. The current interest in a redecorated imperial past fits snugly with a time when America (selectively defined) feels good about itself and flaunts its right to step abroad from a position of unaccommodating strength. And, on the opposite shore, it befits the era of a Prime Minister Thatcher bent on browbeating her country into believing that the “sturdier” values of Victorian (and high imperial) times can lead Britain back to greatness. Yet there is a difference between the two. The British empire is in a state of rigor mortis, with the “Falklands spirit” the last twitchings of the corpse. America, on the other hand, after a post-Viet- nam lull, has a revived faith in its military might and in its prerogative to intervene around the globe—in Grenada, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Angola, Lebanon. But this “imperialism without colonies,” to borrow Harry Magdoff’s phrase, is also an imperialism without a style of its own. No matter how much Reagan may enjoy bandying about phrases like “overt covert aid,” the day is past when an empire can brazenly announce itself as such. The closest it can come is to don the clothes of a bygone power. The popularity of an antique British look to match a new American mood is nowhere more flagrant than in the Banana Republic stores. There is in all this an elegant variant of the new Cold War jingoism, of Rambo, the blue collar hero for whom patriotism means acting before you can doubt. The refined adventurism of Out of Africa and the Banana Republic offers an image that is more delicately imperial. In a rhapsodic review of the film for Time commending Pollack for “the unspeakably gallant act” of matching Blixen’s romantic idealism with a romantic idealism of his own, Richard Schickel unwittingly says it all: Out of Africa is, at last, the free-spirited, fullhearted gesture that everyone has been waiting for the movies to make all decade long. It reclaims the emotional territory that is rightfully theirs. Writer Rob Nixon lives in New York City. This article is reprinted, with permission, from Grand Street, 50 Riverside Drive, New York, NY 10024. Artist Jana Rekosh lives in Seattle. It happened last year in Martha’s Vineyard. It happened this year 15 miles from the U.S. Capitol. Tomorrow the censor’s match could burn the freedom to learn in your own backyard. A book in flames may be an extreme example of censorship. But attacks on the freedom to learn happened this year in 46 states. Not just by individuals.. .but by organized groups. There are those who would remove Huckleberry Finn, Of Mice and Men and other great works from our schools and public libraries. This is not .the American way. Which is why PEOPLE FOR THE AMERICAN WAY exists. We can help protect and preserve your freedom to read, to learn and to decide for yourself. By knowing what your rights are and how you can protect them, you can make sure the freedom to learn never goes up in smoke. People For The I > # ^IQmericanrKiy Don’t take your freedom for granted. People For The American Way, a project of Citizens for Constitutional Concerns, Inc. is a non-partisan citizen's group concerned with rhe individual rights and personal freedoms of all Americans. © People For The American Way PEOPLE FOR THE AMERICAN WAY . 1424 Sixteenth Street, N.W. I Suite #601A ■Washington, D.C. 20036 □ I want to join you in the battle against I censorship. Here is my tax-deductible gift of . $20 or $ I □ I am interested in reading more about I what is censored in America. Please forward me a copy of your study: | ATTACKS ON THEFREEDOM TO LEARN/ . A 1984-1985 REPORT. | Enclosed is my tax-deductible gift of $35 or I m N o A r M e. E_________ ________________________ | ADDRESS I CITY____ . STATE ZIP I Raise the Banner of Freedom | during Banned Books Week. । September 7-14. PA05 Clinton St. Quarterly 7
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