File spoon-archives/postcolonial.archive/postcolonial_1996/96-02-20.131, message 278


Date: Mon, 05 Feb 1996 11:37:55 -0500 (EST)
From: Francis N Nesbitt <fnn-AT-oitunix.oit.umass.edu>
Subject: Re: testing "Gikuyu's" water






Arindum

did you actually suggest that i go "home" because i criticized 
eurocentrism? are you also a pete wilson fan?






On Sun, 4 Feb 1996, Arindam Dutta wrote:





> 
> 
> On Sun, 4 Feb 1996, Francis N Nesbitt wrote:
> 
> > 
> > 
> > cant reply fully to everyone but i remember a line where you said 
> > we need to get our distinctions right on the role of professors, 
> > ideologues and social workers
> > and by the way  
> > my critique was aimed at obscure Lacanian jargon which i think is a 
> > waste of time and reveals a writer's politics (not Gikuyu/Bengali vs 
> > English) so your diatribe on Indian language politics was interesting 
> > but off base
> > 
> 
> No, I think I was pretty much on target there. As far as I could make of 
> your various posts on this forum, the problem that you seemed to be 
> having was of Ngugi's choice of GIKUYU, as opposed to Spivak's use of 
> "Lacanian" jargon. By the way, I don't think Spivak ascribes particularly 
> to "Lacanian" language, the above adjective suspiciously seems to me 
> coming from somebody who has neither read Lacan or Spivak properly, not 
> that you need to, of course, that is completely your choice. If you're 
> using the term "Lacanian" to mean "difficult!", then please stick to the 
> colloquial, it is so much more useful to identify colloquial things. About 
> Spivak and Derrida's language as being "difficult", well, sure, there's not 
> much to be said, the only ironic and oxymoronic suggestion I can make is 
> to ask you to read all of their work. I haven't, I find it too difficult 
> to read, so I blunder, stumble, and struggle through it all, just as I 
> would have to do if I had to learn Gikuyu.
> 
> To criticise James Joyce of not being Ernest Hemingway, to me, is no form 
> of criticism at all, it merely indicates one's own preference, or 
> predilection keeping in mind the vicissitudes of time and effort, 
> background, any combinations of the above.
> 
> I clearly had meant my post, right at its introduction to be seen as 
> COMCPLEMENTARY to Timothy Burke's insightful limning of the 
> fractured option of the use of Gikuyu by Ngugi. Complementary, because, 
> even as the African (I use the name of a continent, because, in terms of 
> languages, India might be regarded the same) scenario needs to be seen in 
> its specificity, so does the Indian condition. Two distinctly situated 
> histories of intellectualism cannot, to use the term once again, so 
> crassly obfuscated by overarching judgements of 
> class-as-determined-by-language conscience. I think this is where 
> deconstruction takes off from its earlier Western antecedants, one has to 
> start to LISTEN CAREFULLY to the OTHER. The general shouting about Spivak 
> and Ngugi going on in this forum, who, as far as I am concerned, are more 
> sisterly spirits than opponents in analogous situated oppositions, I 
> suspect, has more of its foundations in the precise antagonistic 
> oppositions of various kinds of post-Enlightenment thinking within which 
> colonialism is situated. For me, then, it is not surprising that on 
> embarking on its own national adventure, countries such as India and 
> Kenya should start on little colonial adventures of their own. But this 
> is old hat.
> 
> As of now, I haven't yet read Ngugi, but with Burke's precise limnings 
> of the problems of language use regarding empowerment in Africa, I could 
> well identify with. Call me a bitter soul, but I know better what to 
> believe when I read or hear talk of pristine native philosopher saints. 
> And by the way, it's not that I haven't read Ngugi (though now I 
> certainly hope to) because I cut my teeth in the First World Academy, it is 
> precisely the opposite, I went to a government sponsored college in India. 
> For all of our bleeding social consciences of the time, the only Third 
> World fiction we were able to subscribe to were those aberrant voices 
> whose sharp edges had well been blunted by the benevolent translations of 
> the First World counter-culture - Marquez, Neruda, Mahfouz and even with 
> recurrent bans, Rushdie. Mo brudda, if you went to a similar place for 
> your indoctrination, I suggest you quit bluffing. And if you didn't, then 
> I suggest you go there, (there, wherever it is that you feel the call for 
> home).
> 
> When I said that one needs to get one's distinctions clear about college 
> professors and ideologues and literary figures and social workers, this 
> was not to say that any one of these were privileged (as you curiously 
> suggested, certainly THIS of all clearly indicates there are many 
> languages within the English language) over the other, it is exactly the 
> OPPOSITE. I would contend that these are all equally available roles with 
> which the individual can identify herself, and again, as in the Joyce 
> example, it's kind of silly to criticise one position with not being the 
> other. This is not the same as saying that college professors need not 
> have a social conscience, or need not be idealogues, or that social 
> workers should not go to college, or that literary figures need not have 
> an ideological bent of mind. (I think the above sentence was unnecessary, 
> but just in case you DO come back with any of the above.)
> 
> Certainly, as for Spivak, as she has made clear time and again, her field 
> of practice is the CLASSROOM in the first world academy, and her ethical 
> standpoints are towards critical pedagogy ("What to teach?". Any number of 
> respondents on this forum have confused her with being an Indian, in 
> total violation of her remonstrations to being only identified as 
> such, and an Indianist, which is something that she has no intention of 
> being. While speaking at Princeton two years ago, when the standard "India" 
> question came up, she replied "Sure I'm an Indian, but my subject of study is 
> Europe". To be an Europeanist is not to preclude the question of her 
> ex-colonies, or questions of neo-imperialism, because, as most 
> post-colonial  theorists, including Said and Spivak have pointed out, 
> one  cannot have a full account of Europe without an account of its 
> colonial  history. And vice-versa. This is old hat too.
> 
> By making distinctions I would urge you to weigh each of the terms of 
> your own discourse, subject-positions (professors, theatre figures), 
> identities (Indian, Kenyan), specific histories of specific languages, 
> colloquialisms and intellectualisms, the field of theory and the field of 
> social work. To review the particular ways in which the above implicate 
> each other in relationships of power, is way much more difficult, because 
> it requires a coming to grips with that power itself, naked in your eyes, 
> as one is naked oneself. By the way, Nadeem, if you've read this far, I 
> love Faiz.
> 
> Otherwise, as far as I am concerned, identity politics is a piece of 
> shit,
> 
> Much Love
> Arindam 
> 
> "Zulm ka zahar gholne vaale
> Kaamra ho sakenge aaj nikal
> Aur julvagahe visaal ki shame
> bujha bhi chuke to kya
> Chaand ko gul kare to hum jaane."
> 
> Faiz Ahmed Faiz
> 
> 
>      --- from list postcolonial-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
> 


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