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 ---
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