Stereotypes and Stereotyping of Columbus in 1492: Conquest of Paradise

The Stereotyped Portrayal of Columbus in 1492: Conquest of Paradise

There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism. Walter Benjamin, "Theses On The Philosophy Of History," 256.

[1] Walter Benjamin in Illuminations reminds his readers that each history of civilization is tainted by barbarism since the prevailing civilization's history is dependent upon the suppression and eradication of alternative histories that might challenge the legitimacy of the existing civilization's rule. The problem with traditional history that asserts a stance of "objectivity," according to Benjamin, is that it overlooks how the existing powers-that-be superimpose upon past events a history that justifies the present ideological structure's control; or, put more simply, history is always viewed through the biased lenses of the victor. Colonization and history go hand and hand. History is always written by the colonizer, since the colonizer owns and controls the means of production that allows history texts to be reproduced and proliferate. As a result, "The history which he [the colonizer] writes is not the history of the country which he plunders but the history of his own nation in regard to all that she skims off, all that she violates and starves" (Fanon 51).

[2] No matter who the colonizer is, the problem with all historical documents is that they cannot be separated from the subjective interests that create them. Mexican poet and novelist Octavio Paz writes, "Historical circumstances explain our character to the extent that our character explains those circumstances. Both are the same" (72). Our history implicates how we, as individuals and a culture, judge ourselves. There is always a vested present interest in how we view ourselves in the past. And even for those historians who are trying to voice the oppresseds' counter-histories, the historical text will still be inscribed through his/her present ideological limits that bind historical circumstances to character.

[3] But claiming that history is biased is not to imply that it is irrelevant and should stop being written. According to Walter Benjamin, history should stop masking itself as objective and homogeneous and instead focus on the monad: "where thinking suddenly stops in a configuration pregnant with tensions, it gives that configuration a shock" (262). Instead of charting the victor's path, history must examine how colonizer and colonized interact during a specific moment of time.