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. > > > > --- from list postcolonial-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu --- > --- from list postcolonial-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu --- ------------------
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