File spoon-archives/postcolonial.archive/postcolonial_1996/96-07-14.151, message 101


Date: Thu, 20 Jun 1996 11:32:40 -0400
From: jjsamuel-AT-aei.ca (julian samuel)
Subject: Re: Salman Rushdie in the Age of Reason (fwd)


Dear Radhika:

Thanks responding. What does Spivak say? Can you understand what she says?
If the answer is YES -- then are you sure?

I did interview her for the second part of my documentary, Into the European
Mirror (1994) -- I had difficulty with what the ACTUAL content of what she
was saying. I am not sure there was any content: maybe just form? Air?
Literary Quantum Mechanics? 

I could find you some choice passages in her work in which she says NOTHING
yet there is ink on the page. I HEARD (excactly that -- heard) a lecture she
did at McGill -- a total fog job -- cf. Lukas who writes cloudly but HAS a
substantive point to make-- and ofcourse he influenced the KGB etc. I very
much like Screwy Louis Althusser also. Sorry he killed his wife.Your
thinking that I am a Stalinst? I am not.

However, I find SPIVAK totally helpful and generous in many other ways.

I think Aijaz Ahmed is first rate. He goes against the grain -- listen to
all the squeeky pathetic anti-intellectuals on may of these postcolonial
lists. Of course at times he writes rather uglily -- but he does say very
nice contestory things. Things that the bores don't know how to say. Also,
he is somewhat less preliterate than most postcolonials. He over-writes
because he has to compensate for being South Asian? Just a thought.

Rushdie is empire trash.

Julian

>
>On Wed, 19 Jun 1996, Radhika Gajjala wrote:
>
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Dear Timothy:
>> 
>> I greatly appreciate your review of my Rushdie in the Age of Reason.
Thank you.
>> 
>> However, I worry that you have not understood it geopolitically  --  I mean
>> in the deepest way possible ...
>> this out)...this makes it easy for you to be ever-so-slightly harsh with me
>> -- I understand this to be not really your fault. Rushdie is very very
sleazy. 
>This is where I get really interested... 'cos your review of Rushdie had 
>something of the tone of Aijaz Ahmad's In Theory.... a book which despite 
>its many well-discussed shaortcomings (not least why is Spivak 
>necessarily spared from his argument??? ie. b/c she demolishes it..) I 
>have a great deal of sympathy with..
>Yes there is something really repugnant and disturbing about the neatness 
>with which Rushdie and his personal defences have lined up tightly with 
>ruling white hegemonies (if you'll all pardon this absurdly reductionist 
>shorthand of mine)..... against, not least, the "irrational, pre-liberal, 
>less-than elite 'Muslims' of Bradford.. not to mention Tehran!"...
>And class and elite identifications DO have something to do with it... 
>despite all this I admire Rushdie's work... and see so many limitations...
>So Radhika mere pas ek saval hai:.. "where" is your critique launchng 
>from geo/socio/culturo/politically.... I'm assuming a Delhi Marxist rave 
>(this is not an epithet)... and does this posture necessitate vehemence.. 
>a passion lost on many of us white boyz... esp. in the cosy bosom of 
>mother America......
>> I said I did not hold his class-background against him: it is something that
>> ought to be considered. 
>> 
>> You may want to review the works of Amin Maalouf:
>> 
>> Les croisades vues par les arabes
>This one at least is available in English as (surprise!) The Crusades 
>Through Arab Eyes
>> Samarcande
>> Leon L'Africain
>> and Tahar Ben Jelloun's Les amandiers sont morts de leur blessures
>> 
>
>
>     --- from list postcolonial-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
>
>
Julian J. Samuel
360 Terrasse Saint Denis
Montreal
H2X 1E8 
Canada
Phone: 514 284 0431
email: jjsamuel-AT-aei.ca



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