File spoon-archives/postcolonial.archive/postco_1995/postco_Aug.95, message 79


From: FRAGANO S LEDGISTER <f.ledgis-AT-msuacad.morehead-st.edu>
Subject: Re: your mail
Date: Mon, 14 Aug 95 9:53:10 EDT


> 
> Hallo Stephanie, I was very interested to read your posting just now. It raised 
> a couple of important issues that are being chatted about by this group. 
> Firstly, it seemed to address the question as to whether the Net is infact just 
> a neo-colonial space to which only certain groups have access. As Griffiths 
> mailed yesterday, perhaps "post-colonial" Australia marks only the hegemony of 
> a comprador class of white Australians. The Net would therefore become their 
> forum alone. It is totally encouraging to have found an aboriginal voice on the 
> net. All that dreary hand-wringing that besets contemporary 
> postcolonial theory (how should the `other' be represented etc) can be 
> by-passed. Speak for yourself. Welcome and keep mailing.

Who is oneself and who is the 'other'? I would think that would be the central
question.

> 
> What you say about the confused identity of a gay aboriginal raised by white 
> parents is very interesting. It has seemed to me crass to essential difference 
> when it comes to race and culture. We live in a totally syncretic world, in 
> which identity is formed in the present from many different sources. If you are 
> forced to essentialise your identity and ignore your lived experience, your 
> life becomes touched with a sort of illegitimacy for its hybrid nature. I think 
> we should be completely wary of that.
>

How does one 'essentialise' one's identity and ignore one's lived experience?  
(This is not a facetious question, but one of considerable import.)
> An example from the work of the anthropologist Stephen Nugent. He has worked 
> with the peasant communities of the Amazon. In order to write of them, he has 
> first to legitimize these groups as they are seen as "ersatz Amazonians". That 
> is to say they aren't tribal or nomadic, i.e. ethnographically pure. I think it 
> is vital to address peoples, cultures, identities as we find them, and engage 
> with them. So, again, welcome and keep on contributing and fighting for your 
> complex situation! It is one we all share. Yours, Tim.
>
This makes sense.
> 
> 
> 
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> 




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