{"id":148,"date":"2018-02-18T14:13:35","date_gmt":"2018-02-18T19:13:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18s-psci204\/?p=148"},"modified":"2018-02-18T14:13:35","modified_gmt":"2018-02-18T19:13:35","slug":"two-sides-to-every-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18s-psci204\/second-blog-power\/two-sides-to-every-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Sides to Every Story"},"content":{"rendered":"

George Orwell\u2019s Shooting an Elephant<\/em> allows us the opportunity to witness the thoughts of the dominator as he interacts with those he dominates. James Scott would refer to what we read as Orwell\u2019s hidden transcript; we got to see both how he acted as a British officer doing his job, and also how he truly felt, as he shot the elephant simply to avoid being made look like a fool in front of the Burmese. Naturally, seeing Orwell\u2019s hidden transcript readers might sympathize with how he felt powerless with the gun in his hand, and how \u201ctwo thousand wills\u201d seemed to be exerting a force over him that drove him to act (Orwell, 3). However, if we actually consider the role of the Burmese in this power dynamic, this is not the case.<\/p>\n

Consider two less important characters: the elephant owner and the elephant\u2019s victim. The owner, according to Orwell, \u201cwas furious, but he was only an Indian and could do nothing\u201d (Orwell, 4). His ability to seek legal retribution was nonexistent because of his race. By not allowing the elephant owner to air his grievances, we see Gaventa\u2019s second dimension of power where the powerful control by setting the agenda. Furthermore, some of Orwell\u2019s peers declared that it was a \u201cdamn shame to shoot an elephant for killing a coolie,\u201d suggesting that the native victim was less than equal in his oppressors\u2019 eyes (Orwell, 4). Thus, while Orwell\u2019s narrative is compelling in demonstrating the power of the oppressed over the oppressor, their titles are still just that, and in most every place in this colonial society, it is the English oppressor who has power over the natives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

George Orwell\u2019s Shooting an Elephant allows us the opportunity to witness the thoughts of the dominator as he interacts with those he dominates. James Scott would refer to what we read as Orwell\u2019s hidden transcript; we got to see both … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1902,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-second-blog-power"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18s-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18s-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18s-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18s-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1902"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18s-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18s-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":150,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18s-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148\/revisions\/150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18s-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18s-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18s-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}