File spoon-archives/postcolonial.archive/postcolonial_1998/postcolonial.9804, message 83


Date: Mon, 6 Apr 1998 13:18:41 -0400
From: Keith Alan Sprouse <kas3f-AT-virginia.edu>
Subject: Re: poco and the personal


At 11:11 AM 4/6/98 -0400, Lisa wrote:
>Keith, 
>
>I agree with you 100% on the necessity of implicating ourselves personally
>in what we are doing, and on the impossibility for any individual
>to cover all territories included currently in poco studies. On the other
>hand, I think your response is disingenuous. This situation is not at all
>analogous to that of Spivak's anecdote about the white male student; I
>assume that we are all deeply engaged in the kinds of issues that this
>student wished would go away. We wouldn't be members of the list
>if that weren't the case. However, I think the debate was moving
>towards what one person correctly identified as stasis--and it is this
>kind of stasis that frustrates many academics. 

Lisa,

Thanks for the response. The example I used, the dialogue recreated by
Spivak in the interview, was meant to illustrate (and certain she uses it in
"Socratic" fashion) by appeal to a clear-cut case, that of someone who would
be paralyzed by the "liberal guilt" (again I can't remember who used this)
and be overcome with the difficulties of positionality. I think that is
sometimes a danger when one tries to figure one's place in the power
relations. The other side of the coin would be those who would try to
downplay or even smooth over their implication, and if you agree with Spivak
in her "Can the Subaltern Speak?" piece, this includes people like Foucault
and Deleuze (who, by all accounts, were pretty smart and politically
engaged), so I am not convinced that this is truly disingenuous. Or at least
that, in any case, it's something that we have to come back to from time to
time as the price of doing poco, even if we only come back to it in private
or with colleagues off-list. 

Best,

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



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

   

Driftline Main Page

 

Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005