New Imperialists : Ideologies of Empire

The New Imperialists
McNALLY: Imperial Narcissism
5
IMPERIAL NARCISSISM: MICHAEL IGNATIEFF’S
APOLOGIES FOR EMPIRE
David McNally
The nemesis of empire was not just nationalism, but narcissism:
the incorrigible self-satisfaction of imperial elites, their belief that
all the variety of the world’s people aspired to nothing else but to
be a version of themselves. (Michael Ignatieff, Empire Lite 1 )
I Am Iraq. (Michael Ignatieff, New York Times Magazine 2 )
Michael Ignatieff presents himself as the thinking person’s imperialist –
thoughtful, anguished, decent. Bible-thumping imperial fundamentalism
is not his thing. Instead, Ignatieff reads philosophy and literature,
ponders the dilemmas of the human condition and throws in his
reluctant lot with empire only after deep reflection. What I am doing is
risky, he suggests, but I have thought long and hard about it all. I have
spoken with experts, read deeply. To make sure we get the point, he drops
names – of philosophers and literary greats – one after another. In the
course of his meditations in defence of the new imperialism, for instance,
he invokes Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. “In ‘Heart of Darkness’,”
Ignatieff intones, “Joseph Conrad remarked that empire, when observed
close-up, is not a pretty sight. What redeems it, he said, is only the idea.” 3
It is not imperial practice, Ignatieff intimates, but this idea, approved by
no less a critic than Conrad, that he too cherishes. And what is this idea?
It is, he explains, a powerfully “spiritual” one: the notion of “assisting
former enemies to reconcile.” 4 In the face of this soaring rhetoric we