File spoon-archives/postanarchism.archive/postanarchism_2004/postanarchism.0408, message 45


Date: Tue, 31 Aug 2004 17:09:51 -0700 (PDT)
From: villon sasha k <il_frenetico-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: [postanarchism] re: Dirlik


Andy,

   Have you read Dirlik on postcolonialism?  He is
very critical of it, actually; so, I’m not sure one
would want to say he discusses anarchism from a
postcolonial perspective, although he is certainly
critical of colonialism.  In the debates between WST
and postcolonial critique, he defended WST against
postcolonial critics who claimed—rather weakly—that
WST was essentialist (of course, poco critics have
their own forms of essentialism—cultural).  Dirlik’s
understanding of Chinese anarchism isn’t really based
in postcolonial theory at all.  But Dirlik does do a
very good job working within particular/universal
tension.  If we had to place Dirlik, he would be a mix
of Marxism, World Systems Theory and radical Cultural
Studies.  
 
I agree the debates between Marxism and
postcolonialism often leave a lot to be desired.  This
is one of the reasons I like Dirlik, since he took
postcolonial theory pretty seriously in his critique. 
The theoretical points at issue really hide a
political disagreement over nationalism that really
comes to the fore after the discursive end of
revolution (post-Soviet times).  This is when human
rights and bourgeois nationalism take a few steps up
the discursive hierarchy.  Many Marxists are
dismissive too quickly for sure, but simple acceptance
seems equally weak.  This is the question of
particularism/universalism—nationalism versus the
universal class.  The more interesting people don’t
simply dismiss nationalism as bourgeois and nothing
else; instead, they try to pry it apart, looking
inside that form for the revolutionary content
contained.  The point would be to see how that form is
both enabling and limiting of revolutionary action—how
it is part of a process.  Dirlik does this kind of
work with Chinese anarchists; but, in doing so, he
does not fall into postcolonial-critique-style
nationalism (which is, let’s face it, usually rather
bourgeois in character).  He is still pushing a
particular addressed universally, and addressed to a
structural contradiction of our world system (i.e. a
contradiction within a system structured as a relation
not on an essence).  



best,
  sasha

====-------------

Anarchist Discussion Board -- Also for response to KKA, WD and Aporia: http://pub47.ezboard.com/banarchykka


The Killing King Abacus Page: http://www.geocities.com/kk_abacus


		
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - 50x more storage than other providers!
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail

   

Driftline Main Page

 

Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005