Date: Thu, 08 Jul 1999 14:39:45 -0700 From: hugh bone <hughbone-AT-worldnet.att.net> Subject: Re: Defending culture colin.wright3-AT-virgin.net wrote: > > Hugh, > You said "Cultural homogenization is a lesser evil than > dispossesion and removal of populations from their ancestral homes". For > me, the word 'ancestral' here is a recepticle containing exactly the > cultural stakes I was referring to. Capitalism increasingly demands a > radical mobility of its labour force, a luiquidity the better to > redistribute it on an ad hoc basis. My point is that exactly this rapid > mobilization of resources of labour wrenches peoples, communities, > traditions from their situatedness in specific locales, and further, > that this tendency is, insidiously, redefining the perameters of what > constitutes being human. In raising this objection, one opens oneself to > accusations (and under Capitalism it becomes a serious one) of > nostalgia. > By contrast, postmodernism in its emphasis on difference > represents an ethico-political opportunity to recognise culture and > tradition and pre-modern belief systems in general while respecting them > in their alterity. Capitalism disavows the very possibility of alterity, > since, as with all Imperialisms, otherness is an affront to its very > self-understanding. > Col. -AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT- I'm not above taking "Yes" for an answer. Maybe this will answer Lois' question. "Postmodernism" isn't really a player; suffers obsolesence daily; globalizing capitalism kills it. No contest. In WWII, Stalin was supposed to have said: "How many Divisions does the Pope have?" I think of postmodernism as a tree without roots or branches. Hugh
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