File spoon-archives/phillitcrit.archive/phillitcrit_1997/phillitcrit.9711, message 809


Date: Mon, 17 Nov 1997 14:36:32 -0800 (PST)
From: deaun <deaun-AT-unm.edu>
Subject: Re: PLC: Re: postcolonial other




On Sat, 1 Nov 1997, Laura Duhan Kaplan wrote:
> 
> Another connection is found in

> >negotiation with the hegemon is part of daily existence.  Any resistance
> >to the imperial authority is subject to punishment as a reaction against a
> >threat to authority or goes unheard because the language is not
> >acceptable/familiar to the hegemon.

> Where Hearne talks about the dilemma of the trainer/handler when a dog, in
> a difficult situation, does what seems to be a breach of training... 
> the Should the trainer/handler correct
> the dog, or let the possible mistake/misbehavior go uncorrected, in case it
> turns out not to be either a mistake or a misbehavior?

Well, people use dogs as instruments.  Insofar as the training is
intended to perfect the creature as an instrument for human purposes, then
it seems to me that correction would be reasonable.  After all, the
general success of the training is more important than the particular,
accidental success of the mistake.  As a compare and contrast with
colonization and racism I'd say that the proliferation of an image of an
"other" and the internalization of it by the colonized is a pretty fair
analogy.  The colonizers have instrumental purposes for the colonized and
seek to train the colonized for those purposes.  Mistakes are punished.
Dissent is squelched.  

Dogs are evolved from wolves.  If you leave even a well-trained dog alone
with enough provocation it will "revert" to its "natural" state...it will
kill sheep for example.  Training can always be overcome.  In this lies
the hope of future generations of post-colonized........

> One difference is that Hearne believes that working animals do want to
> enter into a working partnership with humans, and that the trainer has to
> begin by laying down a training vocabulary that will become a common
> language.  The trainer's job is both to teach the language and to be
> attentive to the ways in which the dog then uses it to enlarge their shared
> vocabulary, to say or do things that the trainer didn't teach.


Yes, this is reasonable within the confines of the given situation.
Working dogs want to work....that's why they are good working dogs.  But
there is something which hides behind those confines.  "Working dogs" are
bred to want to work.  In other words, the desire that is seemingly being
used as a legitimate reason for domination - set here in terms of
co-operation - depends on an already existing manipulation of the desire.
Does that make any sense?   

> This is the clearest exposition of the motivating idea behind postcolonial
> studies that I've heard.  Perhaps when phrased in technical epistemological
> terms it does sound a bit arrogant, as some critics I've read charge.  

I think some of the arrogance attributed to post-colonial stuff is there. 
One has to be pretty sure of themselves to take on the hegemonic world
order.......!  I don't see arrogance as a sufficient reason to dismiss the
criticism. If anything, it's a reason to pursue the underlying
theorizations.  I also think that many critics miss a truly significant
point. These are people are writing out of experience, out of real world
situations and in search of a way to think about things now.  This isn't
analytical....it's material and political.  A great deal of time and
energy can be expended in explaining WHY one thinks the way one does. Then
there is little time, space or energy left over to explain HOW one thinks. 
In many cases the post-colonials have left off explaining why and are
concentrating on how.

sorry it has taken me so long to get back to this.  

deaun.

deaun-AT-unm.edu






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