File spoon-archives/postcolonial.archive/postcolonial_1998/postcolonial.9806, message 180


Date: Tue, 30 Jun 1998 07:44:03 -0400
From: "Fragano S.J. Ledgister" <f.ledgis-AT-morehead-st.edu>
Subject: Re: poco and pomo


Olalla Pud wrote:
> 
> Tim Durkin wrote:
> 
> >  Hi everybody,
> >     Thanks to Fragano Ledgister for his empassioned and fairly
> > personal defense of my earlier
> > message.
> 
> I would hesitate to call that "impassioned" as would I hesitate
> to call it "defense".  Aggressive/snide attacks such as
> Fragano's discourage constructive discussion. It says "don't
> post anything here unless you want a fight; we don't want this
> list to be a place where ideas are exchanged". I don't believe
> that is the general tone of the list but thanks to Fragano and
> others prone to believe the best defense is a good offense, I
> rarely involve myself in discussion on this list because I
> choose not to fight when it is not necessary.

There are two good reasons to fight: when you have been injured, and
when you have something worth defending.  Life is both conflict and
cooperation.




> 
> As one of the "colonised/victims/oppressed"   I refuse to
> identify with  violence just because "western civilisation
> respects only violence" and I refuse to accept attacks that only
> serve to further divide and isolate. If you believe that a
> bigger weapon truly protects you, then you are sadly mistaken
> Fragano because you have forgotten to protect yourself from your
> own hostility.

How nice. The west dominates the world by military and economic force,
and to respond to that force is unacceptable! How does that differ from
the arguments of colonisers about the rebellious colonised?

> 
> >  I won't repeat the process, just wanted to give that deCerteau
> > quote on the american indians and spanish assimilation that I'd mentioned awhile back:
> > "They were other within the very colonisation that outwardly assimilated them;
> > their use of the dominant social order deflected its power, which they lacked
> > the means to challenge; they escaped it without leaving it" (Michel deCerteau.
> > The Practice of Everyday Life.  Berkeley: U California Press, 1984.  page xiii.).
> >     It's interesting and important that deC. includes this example in his book, which focuses
> > primarily on western ways of life and tactics for marking out one's own
> > space in the postmodern world.  The colonization of the native americans by
> > the spanish and others is made analogous to the colonization of contemporary
> > peoples on the dominant side of the equation by the practices of capitalism.
> > Another point of argument, and I'm very interested to hear what everyone thinks
> > about this, is deCerteau's assertion that "marginality is today no longer
> > limited to minority groups, but is rather massive and pervasive" (xvii).
> > Are postmodern and postcolonial studies, then, analyzing the same basic reactions
> > to capitalism, just in different places, or is deC wrong here?
> > Tim Durkin
> >
> 
>      --- from list postcolonial-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---

That's an interesting question.
-- 

________________________________________________
f.ledgis-AT-msuacad.morehead-st.edu
Dawn over the dark sea brings on the sun;
She leans across the hilltop.  See: the light!
________________________________________________


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