Date: Sun, 5 Apr 1998 15:45:05 -0400
From: Keith Alan Sprouse <kas3f-AT-virginia.edu>
Subject: Re: Is the US PostColonial?


At 09:27 PM 4/4/98 -0500, you wrote:
>On Sat, 4 Apr 1998, JOSHI wrote:
> 
>Who's calling the US, Australia et al postcolonial? Second generation
>colonists refusing to send money home to Mom and Dad does not >Independence
make.

Terry wrote:
>
>Whenever someone wishes to attack me and my kind (something like an 8th
>generation colonist) we are seen as either American or European. Sorry, I
>ain't. 

I'm not sure that this makes any sense to me. If you are saying that
somebody in your family tree (or are you saying that everyone in that rather
large number of people?) came here 8 generations ago, which is what I
uderstand by this, then how could you not be an American/North American? If
you are saying that you personally were not born and raised in North
America, then I am not following the part about your "kind" being here for 8
generations. 

>I've been to Ireland--my family left there before the famine. I've
>been to Ellis Island. I didn't put my name in because no one in any part
>of my family to my knowledge has ever been an American. 

Once again, this seems less than clear. When you say "before the famine,"
when  do you mean. If your family has been here for 8 generations, then you
must have visited Ireland as a tourist, unless you moved back there at some
point. In the meantime, if your family left Ireland 8 generations ago, are
you making the arguement that they married only other people who were Irish
or managed to maintain an Irish culture in North America? Most scholars at
this point would have a hard time with the claim that after 8 generations of
intermarriage that the culture in which one grew up, transplanted and
influenced by the new cultural milieu, would remain the same. Perhaps I'm
just not following what you wrote? 

>I may be white, with a good income, yada yada yada . . . 

I think the "yada, yada, yada" here is interesting. In fact, the moment when
you were begininning to point out your implication within the uneven power
relations is exactly when you decide to downplay it with the "yada, yada,
yada." That speaks volumes.

>. . . and I would never claim to be indigenous, but I am something very
like >Australians, like New Zealanders, and yea, even like Jamaicans. 

I'll pass on the Australians and the New Zealanders, as that's not my area
of expertise. I would, however, be curious to know what you share with
Jamaicans, I really would. Would that be your common history as a nation
that grew out of a slave society, in which social, political, cultural
structures developed within the plantation complex, for example?  

>Austin Clarke, a Canadian writer originally from Barbados, wrote a book
called >Growing Up Stupid Under the Union Jack.
>Sounded like home to me.   

I'm assuming you mean the "Union Jack" part of that title? If so, how would
you see the "Under the Union Jack" experience you had as being like that of
the Jamaican or Trinidadian experience, to name a couple? I think some
historical and cultural specificity might not be a bad things here.

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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