Date: Fri, 3 Apr 1998 09:52:04 -0500
From: Keith Alan Sprouse <kas3f-AT-virginia.edu>
Subject: poco loco, or enemies and/are us


At 09:32 PM 4/2/98 -0500, you wrote:
>eg. literary studies can look at anything by considering it as text
>    geography can look at anything by considering it spatially
>    history can look at anything by considering it temporally
>    feminism can look at anything by considering it as gender
>    "postcolonialism" can look at anything by considering it in terms of
>colonization.

I wonder about the sophistication and the applicability of this formuation.
Take the feminist/feminism line, since Terry seems quite fond of using
feminist studies as an example. I don't know that what femist studies
represents can be very well captured by "looking at anything by considering
it as gender." I have yet to meet a feminist studies scholar that thinks
that EVERYTHING is gender. Many things are not gender and the scholars I've
known who would characterize their area of research as feminist studies
haven't had a problem recognizing this.

>Having said all that, I think the political commitment of the field is not
>inherent to the approach but reflects the people who decide to pursue it,
>for obvious historical reasons. The same is true of feminism, of gay
>studies, and the other fields which began as the study of the relationship
>between "minority" cultures and established hegemony.

I mostly agree with this, but would also argue that the political commitment
is expressed in the very term post_colonial_, which doesn't work that well
historically (lots of people have argued this fairly well, but briefly put,
neo-colonialism still rules in many places), and covers far to many
societies (as it is practiced) to attend to much cultural specificity.
Perhaps the fact that I'm a Caribbeanist in an interdisciplinary program who
never sees poco that does much of anything with one of the central
historical, social, and cultural phenomenon of the Caribbean, the Plantation
complex and slavery, makes me more keenly aware of the limits of the
discipline. 

But I've go to run and do some teaching, so I'll have to continue later.

Keith

____________________________________________________

Keith Alan Sprouse		e-mail:  kas3f-AT-virginia.edu
New World Studies		office: 804.924.4626 
Department of French	fax:  804.924.7157
University of Virginia		home:  804.243.4306
Charlottesville, VA 22903	http://www.people.virginia.edu/~kas3f



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