"Indeed, Williams’ main contribution is in offering a dynamic model that will permit one to study culture and society in terms of how social will or intention (the terms are interchangeable) is engaged in a unceasing activity of circumscribing human behavior on the one hand and diluting resistance to the authority it represents on the other. To know the “social intentions” by which a society is defined is thus to identify not only the potential places where the collective will seeks to assert itself, but also where it is most subject to the fracturing and dissipation caused by extreme pressure."
—
Gauri Viswanathan, Masks of Conquest: Literary Study and British Rule in India. Columbia: 1989. Pg. 10
The excerpt’s arguments feel dated, as if these insights are now theoretical commonplaces. Viswanathan’s language, however, still provides a useful vocabulary that helps articulate by rhyming with my emerging conception of commonsense, especially its relation to imperial pedagogy.Â
