The Intersection of Gender, Class, and Race in the Imperial Enterprise - Essay Example

? The Intersection of Gender, and race in the imperial enterprise The relations among race, gender, and entailed dangerous liaisons referred to as the imperial leather chronicles and was responsible for the shaping of the British Imperialism along with its bloody dismantling. The liaisons started the century of the Victorian Britain through to the struggle against apartheid in South Africa (Gutierrez, 2012, p. 71). The instructive masculine ethos was common in the Edwardian and Victorian Britain and appeared as a strategic to build and develop a spirit des corps aimed at becoming the stronghold of the British Empire. The trendy of masculinity based on professionalism, rhetoric of militarism, as well as elitism enhanced a set of attitudes and personalities to fit in the structure of imperial legitimacy in conjunction with racial dominance. Moralists at the fin-de-siecle hitherto supporters of a specific brand of inflexible gender concepts of manliness responsible for the perpetuation of a society that had a hierarchical framework. The spread of rigid gender ideologies worked to maintain power and privilege both abroad for instance in South Africa and at home. The socio-sexual framework during the Victorian Britain regime came of the intersection through race, gender, and class and in the process informed the outlined power structures that acted on behalf of the nexus of the bigger political enterprises. In the end, the rise of masculine culture in an inflated manner happened simultaneously with the exposure of the proverbial Achilles Heel for Britain. These were the vulnerabilities of the colonial mastery resulting from strong and brave claims for the power of the British. The British officers acted as competitive, aggressive, and powerful figures (Perry, 2001, p. 33). This is the reason various forums continue to debate on national identity and the imperial rule associated with two reinforcing ideologies acting in a mutually inclusive way. The concepts in the discourse are the Empire and dominant masculinity. Scholars explain the symbiotic relationship between race, gender, and class born out of fear concerning the decline of the British superior race. A series of movies, a huge quantity of literature, and a wide range of works of art often put into perspective colonization and the entire process of forming empires among them the British Imperial enterprises as male dominated adventure stories. The imperial enterprises entailed maleness (Stoddard, 2012, p. 89). However, according to the historians who studied gender, imperial maleness otherwise referred to as masculinity required regular and standardized substantiation and confirmation. Scholars who dwelt on the analysis of the empire found similar characteristics for the colonial rule that also constantly required confirmation and legitimization due to the permanent fear among the British white that subject in the colonial enterprises would undermine the racial as well as colonial privileges and prestige in addition to power and superiority of the colonial master. The forums of colonial discussions on gender appeared among the spaces of manifesting the instability and power structures of the empires were most visible. It is important to identify that competing interests of femininity and masculinity called maleness were significant to the normal order of the colonial master (Kent, 1987, p. 87). However, it is not possible to comprehend them in isolation. Any analysis of the two in addition to race and class requires an overall undertaking of their history put into their contextual perspectives. The society constructed gender, race, and class in interplay with other categories as well themselves. They include religion, ethnicity, as well as sexuality. The intersection resulted in creating racial, sexual, and national hierarchies that provided the challenge or stabilized the imperial rule during the nineteenth and twentieth century. They intersection also offers challenge to the scholars of history to think and study comparatively about the empires and in the process question what empires constituted. The Ottoman Empire for instance, turned out to one of the longest and largest lasting empires in the world (Richardson, & Hofkosh, 1996, p. 34). The Ottoman Empire reproduced in the British imperial harem. This institution depended on the process of importing slave concubines fundamentally from the Caucasus as well as the local slave labour originating from Eastern Africa. The empire spread across Europe, Africa, and Asia. The broad proliferation of idealized masculine ideas acted as a natural reconnection regarding the survival and strength of the imperial rule. In the same breadth, the social cultural elements occurring in the late ninetieth century reveal a great shift in the famous notions of the identities of the male gender among the British. The new definition went against the concepts held by the evangelical Christian model that operated on benevolence and altruism. The new definition of manliness required a generation of imperial leaders who accepted to be audacious physical specimens having athletic prowess. The leaders were to be individuals with muscular Christianity considered future protectors of the British Empire. They would b superior and offer justification for the continual expansion of the Empire. In the British imperialism, what was important was the society to restructure the modern, male members from the middle-class in the society in order to the authoritative representation in the British sporting culture. The athlete was to be synonymous with the colonizer within the spheres of sports. This was because both the athlete and sports were entangled with valorised attributes of masculinity. The British considered the playing field as the metaphorical battleground for the colonial master. A literature review of the time shows how the male dominated spheres of contest as well as competition acted as training grounds and sessions for conquests. Britain had a special aptitude that entailed taking up the burden that belonged to the white man that worked together with the spirit of organized games. Therefore, it was logical that a warrior had an inherent mentality to the British race having its origin in the impersonate wars organized during sporting activities. Seemingly, the process of internalizing high moral standards became possible because of engaging institutions of learning both at the basic and higher learning levels. The educational institutions had curricula geared in the direction of creating and developing generations of citizens whose minds were imperial-like. Britain designed its school system with aim of instilling deference and dominance. The policy makers deliberately designed the syllabus to diffuse the imperial discourse among the school-going children. This would help the children internalize the concept among the upcoming generations by the time they become adults. Together with moral masculinity, education practices focused on enhancing the role of the finest from Britain. In the context of institutions of higher learning such as universities, the system combined pedagogical instruction and the professionalized sporting culture in order to create a concept-saturated population with the highest level of education in the land. The nation fully respected and adored manliness whose goal was triumph and carried utmost importance. The contents of what British were not about entailed the clarion call in the process of diffusing the national ideas of the British Empire within the political realms of politicians. The trendy of masculinity was to establish male supremacy, class solidarity, and in the process enhance male superiority by setting boundaries concerning people who would be in as well as those who would be out. It was definite that during the era or British imperialism, this was a culture based on hegemonic masculinity. These were the practices and norms employed by the political class of that time to maintain and expand authority and dominance over the subjects. Driving a relationship between race, gender, and class aimed at producing political dominance via cultural superiority. This was the manifestation of existing patriarchal masculinities. The era of New Imperialism witnessed the gendering as well as the entire process of racializing of the national identity reinforcing legitimization of power and self-awareness. Inherent and internalized Britishness based on how the individual relationally depicted others particularly. The British Empire focused on the education and sporting fields, which appeared politically charged realms. Here, the assemblage of values originated from demarcations of the British national identity exclusively facilitated by the production of ideologies primarily white, male, and arising from the upper class of the society in the British class system. The society was structured in the sense that the relationship between genders, class, and race was no static concerning conceptions about the longue durce. This also applied to the history of the process of standardizing the discipline of masculinity. In the education sector, the male gender history of identities ignited widespread scholarships covering the construction of power relationships along with its nature. It is appreciated because of its ability to maintain visible power connections. Gender is largely a manifestation of popular knowledge acting as an ideological shift and representation of culturally and socially conditional constructs (Midgley, 2007, p. 23). Back in the Victorian Britain, concepts of gendered relevance degenerated from moral teachings regarding sexual behaviours that draw respect. In addition to the influences of the Marxian ideologies, the historical content of gender shaped in a profound manner through the turn of language as well as the new history of culture. Academicians applied the Lacanian approach to shape the language of the people towards the history of gender to establish the historical connections of the same as well as the differences in the vernacular along with the processes of identifying language being the fundamental ways through which the society identified gender differences. It was the responsibility of social constructionists to show how foundations of the differences in sexes occurred by focusing on the function of the discourse in the education systems (Mcclintock, 2013, p. 51). A combination of post-structuralists and post-modernists in the imperial British offered nuanced aspects of subjective identities of women and men in the process of seeking to dilute and eliminate the stereotype that deal with binary oppositions manufactured socially. The call for destabilizing hierarchical constructions thought of by historians as self-evident resulted in the impetus for gender as an important segment of historical analysis. Scholars of gender in the early days in the British Imperial avoided the concept of masculinity with aim of making sure that feminine came into the focus of the society. This was the reason for the early emphasis on sexual prevalence of one gender underscoring the repressive institution of a patriarchal society. A proper understanding of the intersection between gender, race, and class required an in-depth analysis of the significance of the sexes as posited by Joan Scott. Works of other prominent scholars such as Peter Filene and Peter Stearns on the dominance of masculinity over feminine in the gender relationship is also crucial (West, 1996, p. 41). The two scholars played a significant role in making sure that masculinity occupied a central and crucial role in the history of gender analysis in the British Imperial enterprise. In assessing the sphere of gender relationships at the time, historians put to use a Gramscian theory that dealt with the dominance of one gender with the aim of disclosing disparate social connections as well as the empowerment mechanisms of particular groups of people. The present hierarchies of race are offshoots of two lines of history that are seemingly dissonant in the British Imperial. These are humanly desire to get freedom and the universality as well as the legacy of colonial masters in their respective regimes that strived to control reproduction work, and the social structure of the subjects in the colonies (Sramek, 2011, p. 56). The history of race in the Victorian Britain for instance, shows a stark fact that all Euro-American rhetorical articulation of freedom in addition to worldwide connectedness being stalked by various racial interconnections and oppressions. The oppressions represent the conditions of possibility. It is important to mention in this case to propose that brutality, evil, and terror started with the inception of scientific racism in the direction of the eighteenth century. Similarly, it is unacceptable to underrate the importance of the moment that appears at the break point through the development of modern lines of thought in the perspective of the nature of humanity. Five ways through which race appeared in the Victorian British Imperialism exist. First, it entailed the capitalist connections of production in the era that allowed free trade imperialism. This perspective covered indenture, slavery, and fears of miscegenation, wage labour, and hybridist (Chaudhuri, & Strobel, 1992, p. 69). Other elements are a degeneration of the original race associated with both the sexual and cultural influx in the British enterprises. This adds to the increasing number of immigrants from dark places on Earth as perceived by whites. This is a pseudoscientific social Darwinism secularized moment for all projects of imperialists. This enabled Europeans to direct a teleological as it appears among cultures of the people who are not black following the evolutionary rates. This is sometimes below the starting level. This occurred during the anxieties of the ethnicity of the English during global expansion of the same empire. List of References Chaudhuri, N., & Strobel, M. (1992). Western women and imperialism complicity and resistance. Bloomington, Indiana University Press.  Gutierrez, Muhs, G. (2012). Presumed incompetent: the intersections of race and class for women in academia. Boulder, Colo, University Press of Colorado. Kent, S. K. (1987). Sex and suffrage in Britain, 1860-1914. Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press. Mcclintock, A. (2013). .Imperial Leather Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest. Hoboken, Taylor and Francis. Midgley, C. (2007). Feminism and empire: women activists in imperial Britain, 1790-1865. London, Routledge. Perry, A. (2001). On the edge of empire: gender, race, and the making of British Columbia, 1849-1871. Toronto, University of Toronto Press. Richardson, A., & Hofkosh, S. (1996). Romanticism, race, and imperial culture, 1780-1834. Bloomington, Indiana University Press.  Sramek, J. (2011). Gender, morality, and race in Company India, 1765-1858. New York, Palgrave Macmillan. Stoddard, E. W. (2012). Positioning gender and race in (post)colonial plantation space: connecting Ireland and the Caribbean. New York, NY, Palgrave Macmillan. West, S. (1996). The Victorians and race. Aldershot, England, Scholar Press. Read More