Hi.
"A whiner and ineffectual"? Ouch. That hurts.
I'm not saying that Eurocentrism and racism are necessarily equivalent
terms. But to postulate as universal a phenomenon as "the human
condition" as the (or even an) object in Foucault, when, after all, he
only ever really talked about Europe, is to perform quite a dazzling
erasure. The complex cultural dynamics that Foucault investigated do
*not* apply to everyone everywhere - they only apply to specific people.
And to claim that these specific people (Europeans and, to a lesser
extent, North Americans) are, in fact, everybody (for this is what the
term "human condition" does) is racist. Racist because it takes Europe as
a symbolic stand-in for the whole world. Racist because what happens in
Europe defines "the human condition". One should not be so quick to
assume that one can speak for everybody, or that a particular oeuvre
takes everybody as its object.
And, in the modern world, for all intents and purposes, colonialism *is*
a very European phenomenon. All too often, I've heard people say things
like: "Other people besides Europeans practice colonialism, you know?"
(By these "other people", of course, they mean Africans, or Asians.) To
which the appropriate response is: "So?" If you mean that, before the
spread of European colonialism in the 18th century, other people did
things that sure look like colonialism, my resposne is: how is this at
all relevant? In fact, this is totally irrelevant except as a rhetorical
move to deflect attention away from Europe as the primary perpetrator of
colonialism. Only a move a guilt-racked European would make.
If, on the other hand, you mean that *today*, other powers besides
Western powers (I apologize if I'm collapsing European and Western, but I
haven't the energy to justify myself on this point) practice colonialism,
then name one instance of colonialism that isn't supported and
orchestrated by some Western power or other, that hasn't come to be used
by Western powers in their own interests.
Hugs and smooches.
malcolm
"A whiner and ineffectual"? Ouch. That hurts.
I'm not saying that Eurocentrism and racism are necessarily equivalent
terms. But to postulate as universal a phenomenon as "the human
condition" as the (or even an) object in Foucault, when, after all, he
only ever really talked about Europe, is to perform quite a dazzling
erasure. The complex cultural dynamics that Foucault investigated do
*not* apply to everyone everywhere - they only apply to specific people.
And to claim that these specific people (Europeans and, to a lesser
extent, North Americans) are, in fact, everybody (for this is what the
term "human condition" does) is racist. Racist because it takes Europe as
a symbolic stand-in for the whole world. Racist because what happens in
Europe defines "the human condition". One should not be so quick to
assume that one can speak for everybody, or that a particular oeuvre
takes everybody as its object.
And, in the modern world, for all intents and purposes, colonialism *is*
a very European phenomenon. All too often, I've heard people say things
like: "Other people besides Europeans practice colonialism, you know?"
(By these "other people", of course, they mean Africans, or Asians.) To
which the appropriate response is: "So?" If you mean that, before the
spread of European colonialism in the 18th century, other people did
things that sure look like colonialism, my resposne is: how is this at
all relevant? In fact, this is totally irrelevant except as a rhetorical
move to deflect attention away from Europe as the primary perpetrator of
colonialism. Only a move a guilt-racked European would make.
If, on the other hand, you mean that *today*, other powers besides
Western powers (I apologize if I'm collapsing European and Western, but I
haven't the energy to justify myself on this point) practice colonialism,
then name one instance of colonialism that isn't supported and
orchestrated by some Western power or other, that hasn't come to be used
by Western powers in their own interests.
Hugs and smooches.
malcolm