000 01868pab a2200181 454500
008 180718b2016 xxu||||| |||| 00| 0 eng d
100 _aKlausen, Jimmy Casas
245 _aViolence and epistemology: J. S. Mill's Indian after the "Mutiny"
260 _c2016
300 _ap.96-107.
362 _aMar
520 _aAlthough some of his most important writings date to the period immediately after the Indian Revolt of 1857, J. S. Mill seemed unable to recognize that British violence might substantively contradict British people's "civilized" character. Likewise, he could not view Indian actions, including recent insurgent violence, as political but rather only as expressions of "barbarian" character, nor could he consider the occasional reforming native leader effective in producing lasting political change. What enabled Mill to ignore evidence that contradicted his firm generalizations about essentially "barbarian" Indians and "civilized" Britons? Arguing that Mill wrote during an important shift in the order of European knowledge, this article explores two epistemological devices by which Mill consistently reconciled apparent outliers from a class to the rest of the class in questionï¾—his characterization of human differences as either "essential" or "accidental" and his reliance on a concept of the "norm" that is ambiguous between normative (ideal) and normal (typical) human character. Analyzing how Mill diminished both violence by the civilized and capacity for political change by barbarians as merely accidental, we can understand how epistemic and physical violence are linked and, more generally, how essentialism functions in the characterization of complex political phenomena. - Reproduce
650 _aMill, J. S.
650 _aEpistemology
650 _aViolence
773 _aPolitical Research Quarterly
909 _a110985
999 _c110980
_d110980