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Rhetorical Trope In The Rhetoric Of Empire

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As a field of study, colonial discourse was and still is attracting the interest of a vast array of researchers, critics, and scholars. By and large, analyzing such discourse is a process of unmasking some of the hidden intentions of the colonizer which are expressed indirectly through language. Having critically analyzed a large body of texts, in his book “The Rhetoric of Empire”, David Spurr has skillfully categorized such discourse under several rhetorical tropes. Therefore, given that tropes such as surveillance, classification, and affirmation can be concretely pointed out in the Western discourse about the Other, one can firmly argue that through his categorization of these rhetorical tropes, David Spurr has successfully managed to introduce a deeper level of analysis of the western discourse regarding the representation of the Other. Surveillance is a recurrent rhetorical trope that has been adopted by the colonial discourse to represent the Other. Moving from the general to the specific, David Spurr examines the way the Western colonizer looks …show more content…

In his book “The Other Question”, Homi Bhabha argues that “the colonial subject is returned to the narcissism of the Imaginary and its identification of an ideal ego that is white and whole.”8 Bhabha here criticizes the narcissistic discourse used by the colonizer to impose authority over the colonized .He tackles also “the positivity of whiteness”9 that has been affirmed repeatedly in the European discourse. Edward Said, on the other hand, admits the impact of affirmation as a rhetorical trope in the construction of ideologies; Said states that concepts such as “Orient” and “West” are “made up of human effort, partly affirmation, partly identification of the Other.”10 Besides, Spurr is not the only one who considers Kipling’s white man as a manifestation of affirmation in the colonial

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