7a_The White Man and the Other

Rudyard Kipling was born
in British India in 1865. In
1907 he received the
Nobel Prize for Literature.
Many of his tales were set
there where he had been
born and raised (Jungle
Books). Kipling
considered himself a
product of that empire,
and he became an
supporter of western
imperialism:
to him, it was a moral
obligation.
“The White Man’s Burden”
Rudyard Kipling
1899
The White Man’s Burden
By Rudyard Kipling
Take up the White Man's burden-Send forth the best ye breed-Go, bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait, in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild-Your new-caught sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child.
The White Man’s Burden
By Rudyard Kipling
Take up the White Man's burden-In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain,
To seek another's profit
And work another's gain.
The White Man’s Burden
By Rudyard Kipling
Take up the White Man's burden-The savage wars of peace-Fill full the mouth of Famine,
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
(The end for others sought)
Watch sloth and heathen folly
Bring all your hope to nought.
The White Man’s Burden
By Rudyard Kipling
Take up the White Man's burden-No iron rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper-The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go, make them with your living
And mark them with your dead.
The White Man’s Burden
By Rudyard Kipling
Take up the White Man's burden,
And reap his old reward-The blame of those ye better
The hate of those ye guard-The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:-"Why brought ye us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?"
The White Man’s Burden
By Rudyard Kipling
Take up the White Man's burden-Ye dare not stoop to less-Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloak your weariness.
By all ye will or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent sullen peoples
Shall weigh your God and you.
The White Man’s Burden
By Rudyard Kipling
Take up the White Man's burden!
Have done with childish days-The lightly-proffered laurel,
The easy ungrudged praise:
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years,
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers.
The white man's burden-from an 1899 edition of Life Magazine
Interpretations
A straigh*orward analysis of the poem may conclude that Kipling presents a Eurocentric view of the world, in which non-­‐European cultures are seen as childlike and demonic. This view proposes that white people consequently have an obligaAon to rule over, and encourage the cultural development of people from other ethnic and cultural backgrounds unAl they can take their place in the world by fully adopAng Western ways. The term "the white man's burden" can be interpreted simply as racist, or taken as a metaphor for a condescending view of non-­‐Western naAonal culture and economic tradiAons, idenAfied as a sense of European ascendancy which has been called "cultural imperialism". A parallel can also be drawn with the philanthropic view, common in Kipling's formaAve years, that the rich have a moral duty and obligaAon to help the poor "beFer" themselves whether the poor want the help or not. Interpretations
Within a historical context, the poem makes clear the prevalent aHtudes that allowed colonialism to proceed. Although a belief in the "virtues of empire" was wide-­‐spread at the Ame, there were also many dissenters; the publicaAon of the poem caused a torrent of arguments from both sides, most notably from Mark Twain and Henry James. Much of Kipling's other wriAng does suggest that he genuinely believed in the "beneficent role" which the introducAon of Western ideas could play in liMing non-­‐Western peoples out of "poverty and ignorance." Lines 3-­‐5, and other parts of the poem suggest that it is not just the naAve people who are enslaved, but also the "funcAonaries of empire," who are caught in colonial service. Some commentators point to Kipling's history of saArical wriAng, and suggest that "The White Man's Burden" is in fact meant to saArically undermine imperialism. Mannoni’s The White Man's Destiny
“It is the destiny of the Occidental to face the obligation laid
down by the commandment Thou shalt leave thy father and thy
mother. This obligation is incomprehensible to the
Madagascan. At a given time in his development, every
European discovers in himself the desire… to break the
bonds of dependency, to become the equal of his father. The
Madagascan, never! He does not experience rivalry with the
paternal authority, "manly protest," or Adlerian inferiorityordeals through which the European must pass and which
are like civilized forms… of the initiation rites by which one
achieves manhood…”
A French psychoanalyst and author. After spending more than twenty years
in Madagascar, Mannoni returned to France after World War II where he,
inspired by Lacan, published several psychoanalytic books and articles.
Arguably his most well-known work, Prospero and Caliban: The Psychology
of Colonization (1956), deals with colonization and the psychology of the
colonizer and the colonized.
Tiziano Terzani:
The white man’s presumption?
Play
Terzani
video’s
The
white
man’s
presum
ption
Giornalista e scrittore italiano (1938-2004). Profondo conoscitore del continente
asiatico, vi approdò per la prima volta nel 1965, inviato dall'Olivetti.