Quine's Ambivalence

Abstract

ne of the most striking developments in recent cultural studies is the growing recognition that modern forms of cultural oppression operate not only, perhaps not even principally, by means of directly repressive policies and practices. Instead, we have come to understand that one of the most important weapons in the modern colonial arsenal is what appears, on the surface, to be ambivalence within the colonial project itself. That ambivalence may arise at the level of the individual-in cultural representations of figures like the good slaveowner, the kind general or explorer or conquistador who is constantly at pains to hold back his overzealous troops, the tolerant ethnographer, or the withdrawn, emotionless, benighted administrator-and may also arise