File spoon-archives/french-feminism.archive/french-feminism_1996/96-07-07.000, message 152


Date: Mon, 1 Jul 1996 02:46:37 -0500 (CDT)
From: Nancy Ann Nield <nanield-AT-midway.uchicago.edu>
Subject: Re: Cyberpunk & "reality"


Don, if you have such a negative view of feminism and worry about its 
potential for propagating tyrrany (over men?  non-feminist women?), like 
the "creul and awful" Aztecs (does this make the Spanish conquistadores 
genocide excusable?), *why* are you on this list?

Nancy Nield
University of Chicago

On Sun, 30 Jun 1996, don walter wrote:

> Thanks to ddd for well expressing clear views about de(con)struction and
> where the present world seems to be writing itself into.  I did, however,
> get sent back in my mind to an (Anglo) acquaintance from several years ago,
> who was reading about the Spanish invasion of Mexico, and marveling how
> cruel and awful the Spanish were; I had to remind him that the Aztecs were
> at least as cruel and awful to those _they_ conquered, which at least gave
> him to think... Relevance is that ddd says: 
> > Abstract theories are already responsible for 
> >motivating and justifying some of the most frightening atrocities 
> >imaginable. Apartheid. Slavery. Rape. Genocide/Genus-cide/Gynocide. 
> 
> Well, that's true in some senses.  But I question whether other ways of
> doing/being/thinking may turn out to be just as able to rationalize cruel
> atrocities, when _they_ happen to become Top Dog.  Feminists may be just
> wonderful people, even assuming that they achieve power; but I believe, on
> the basis of human self-deception capabilities, that if some feminists
> achieve power, it will not seem a whole lot more benign for very long, to
> those who don't fit in with the new way... I can't point to places this has
> happened yet, so maybe I should keep my pessimism to myself; and yes,
> feminist theory of how it will be, sounds in many ways different from
> capitalist Power.  But so do the theories of most revolutions.  I guess that
> feminist theorists also believe that their Way will avoid many of those
> (phallic) booby-traps; and maybe they will, even if theory becomes practice...
> 



   

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