Rather than extemporaneous passions was the threat of sustained sensibilities, resentments against ongoing unfreedoms, and the political standards they called into question. Outbursts were manage- able. It was those durable sentiments, those of parental distress and the wounds of estrangement, that expressed judgment and critique. These were (un)colonial dispositions and expectations with high political stakes.

Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ E…, loc. 578