Interrogating Charity and the Benevolence of Empire
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Dialogue
Interrogating Charity and the Benevolence of Empire NERMEEN SHAIKH 1
ABSTRACT Nermeen Shaikh goes underneath the benevolent face of power to examine the forms that imperialism has assumed, along with its enduring legacies, even as its own humanitarian ideals have been betrayed. She traces its evolution from the civilizing mission to the spread of freedom and democracy and reveals some of the consequences of interventions made in the name of charity. KEYWORDS colonialism; civilizing mission; post-colonialism; humanitarian intervention; collateral damage
To be capable of good and evil is not simply to be capable of doing this or that good or bad action (every particular good or bad action is, in this sense, banal). Radical evil is not this or that bad deed but the potentiality for darkness. And yet this potentiality is also the potentiality for light (Agamben, 1999:181).
Introduction In Lars von Trier’s film, Dogville, a hapless fugitive, suggestively named ‘Grace’, finds herself in a Depression-era American town, where she is at first welcomed openly and generously (if somewhat suspiciously) by its well-intentioned inhabitants. What follows in this magnificent Brechtian parable is the gradual unfolding of the conditions for her welcome, all expressed in a register of care and well-being even as she is made to volunteer a growing number of services for the townspeople, from housekeeping to gardening. Grace submits without question to this increasingly exploitative moral economy, believing in the humanity and the goodness of those to whom she is beholden. The nominal hero of the film is a smug writer manqueŁ who is also something of a moral philosopher, given to sermonizing on the virtues of responsibility, community, and the common good. The townspeople come to doubt Grace’s na|« veteŁ and goodwill, eventually abusing her precisely because of her goodness. She is ultimately reduced to a slave, enchained and raped repeatedly (by the smug philosopher as well). As the narrative concludes, Grace responds to this treatment with an act of brutal and violent revenge. Notwithstanding the reservations about the film and its director expressed in numerous reviews and articles ^ anti-Americanism, misanthropy, misogyny, and cynicism ^ what is remarkable about the narrative is the way it interrogates the notion of charity, Development (2007) 50(2), 83–89. doi:10.1057/palgrave.development.1100364
Development 50(2): Dialogue of what it means to help someone in need, and the reflection it thereby provides, allegorically, on the idealistic and humanitarian impulse that has always been part of the American messianic tradition, evidence of which has been most recently before us in Iraq, if not so obviously in Afghanistan.
The civilizing mission
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To the extent that the US is now the principal repository of the world’s military, political, and financial power (bracketing for the moment the economic bubble on which the last is premised),2 it is a worthy object of historical scrutiny, especially if we regard the ascendanc
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