Date: Mon, 9 Feb 2004 23:56:51 -0800 (PST) From: "J.M. Adams" <ringfingers-AT-yahoo.com> Subject: Re: [postanarchism] Ghandchi: "Postmodernism Shaping Islamism" In regard to your statement referring to Tadzio Mueller's essay: "I think the essay is badly compromised in a number of ways, some of which may reflect the "activistism" our marxist comrades speak about in another essay you forwarded. The latter issue is one we could debate. The issue of misrepresenting sources is a little more straightforward. I know you don't claim to have even read all the way through these texts, but that still leaves the question open: why send them - particularly when they can be shown to be misleading in a variety of ways" I can only gather from this question that you are suggesting that because you personally felt that Mueller misrepresented Barbara Epstein's article that I should somehow have not posted it for that reason alone? Despite the fact that this was published in Anarchist Studies, the only academic anarchist journal that I am aware of, and certainly the one that has published the majority of the essays in print looking at the intersection between anarchism and contemporary critical theory, it is a rather interesting article aside from all of that, and there are many things in your own writings that I could point to as 'misrepresentations' yet you don't see me not posting your stuff do you? When you say "why send them" in reference to articles such as Mueller's, you leave me without any kind of possible response - *of course* I am going to post articles like Mueller's to a listserv like this, that is why it exists, his is a valid and important contribution to the discussion, it may not be one you agree with, but that is beside the point. Now whether it exists for essays like Ghandchi's is another question I suppose, but then we can move on to that too: You ask in regard to the Ghandchi essay: "What, then, is the value of giving it further circulation? Information glut is a real enough problem that unfiltered forwarding seems like a questionable critical practice." I guess I feel like it is important to hear all the voices that are discussing this from whatever angle, even if we do not agree with the perspective being offered. I don't want to feel like there is only one discussion that we are having here, it seems like most people on the list want it to be as open-ended as possible, which is what my perspective is as well. In regard to the question of postmodernism and Islam, one of the most interesting in this regard is Akbar Ahmed's book at http://www.frontlist.com/detail/0415062934 or Ziauddin Sardar at http://styluspub.com/books/book6163.html - the latter has written some very interesting works on postcolonial critique of 'Western' science. Hardt and Negri state on p. 147 of Empire that "fundamentalism, however, is a poor and confused category that groups together widely disparate phenomena. In general, one might say that fundamentalisms, diverse though they may be, are linked by their being understood both from within and outside as anti-modernist movements, resurgences of primordial identities and values; they are conceived as a kind of historical backflow, a de-modernization. It is more accurate and more useful, however, to understand the various fundamentalisms not as the recreation of a premodern world, but rather as a powerful refusal of the contemporary historical passage in course" (147). In addition to this, George Katsiaficas has argued from a radical mulitculturalist perspective that we may need to learn to coexist with Islamic fundamentalism, at least to a greater extent than is typically accepted by the mainstream Left, though he is not exactly a postmodernist per se. The concept of the 'Veil of Resistance' which some postmodern theorists refer to, such as my former professor Steve Niva at the Evergreen State College is explained here: www.utexas.edu/cola/depts/culturalstudies/ tpp/tpp4/perkins.pdf - what I remember of it is basically the idea that whereas in the West we often think that any kind of veil or burka or whatever is always in all cases and situations proof of the oppression of women, in fact it is sometimes a form of resistance by the women themselves against Western homogenization - witness for instance the recent attempts to ban headwear by the French governement, in this case the 'veil of oppression' becomes a 'veil of resistance'. Jason Jason ===="“It does not matter how many people chose moral duty over the rationality of self-preservation - what does matter is that some did. Evil is not all-powerful. It can be resisted. The testimony of the few who did resist shatters the authority of the logic of self-preservation. It shows it for what it is in the end - a choice." - Zygmunt Bauman, 'Modernity and the Holocaust' __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Finance: Get your refund fast by filing online. http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html
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