historicising texts

i think the stoler article helps to pull us back as subjective readers and interpreters to historicise texts within the economic and social realities that were actually occurring at the time--historical facts which we (or at least i) tend to overlook in lieu of textual evidence such as characterisation, metaphors, etc. for instance, instead of reading ma hla may as a devious temptress who manipulates and blackmails flory for her own capitalistic gains - an agent of her own capitalist agenda - as we did last class, we now can see her contextualised within the prevalence of concubinage, which "was tolerated precisely because "poor whites" were not." (Stoler 54) not only is she divested of her agency in such a context, she's tolerated because concubinage perpetuates "white prestige" as european women are perceived as too expensive to upkeep, and therefore native women become the convenient outlets of sexual release who are, naturally, divested of any legal rights. Stoler is quick to point out that "Colonized women could sometimes parlay their positions into personal profit and small rewards, but these were individual negotiations with no social, legal, or cumulative claims." (57) placed within such a machine, may becomes that cog lacking agency which in so far as she is able to act (eg. putting on the mask and taking it off after her performance as was discussed) deludes herself and flory into perceiving she is dangerous in any way, when it is the other way around and white men like flory are "protected" (or at least perceived to be paternalistically) by the white colonial regime. while this might seem like pointing the finger at exploitative white men again, the article qualifies this and asserts that to some extent they, like women both native and colonised, are all colonial subjects in their own right, subsumed within the mechanics of colonial exploitation.