historical context

In considering imperialist texts that arguably display a certain measure of racism (Conrad leaps to mind...), one way to "forgive" the faults of the writers is to invoke "historical context": Conrad may have objectified his Africans (and some might say, his South East Asians), but perhaps there wasn't any other way for him to act, given the historical circumstances of the time.

I tend to have some problems with this line of reasoning, although I don't think its invalid: it helps explain, at least in my own case, a certain resistance to hard-core postmodernity that deconstructs all meanings and binaries. But on the other hand, it seems to gloss over questions such as individual responsibility and the relationship of the individual with received ideologies. At its least sophisticated, it seems to imply that individuals cannot act outside a certain historical framework at all, or worse, that we 21st century individuals are somehow free (or at least 'more free') than our nasty, racist predecessors.

I find Orwell's "Shooting an Elephant" helpful in trying to understand this concept: the narrative comes an officer in British Burma, from within the "historical context" of imperialism rather than from its margins, or from a different temporal vantage point. Seen from the inside, one speaks less of ideologies than experience: what turns the officer against British imperialism is the "dirty work" he witnesses, the prisoners and the tortured; at the same time what turns him against the Burmese is the physical and verbal insults.

Such a text is helpful, i think, in reminding us that we (and our predecessors) have more than mere "historical context": we do possess the ability to consider our relationship with given ideologies, and, if unable to transcend them, at least problematise or resist them.