Date: Tue, 13 Apr 1999 11:45:19 -0700 From: "Marlene R. Atleo" <maratleo-AT-island.net> Subject: Whiteness, Rightness, En-lighten-ness The fluidity of "rationality" about "race" and "nationality" is certainly something I have been trying to illustrate with my prattle.... >If the intervention in Kosovo came about because Kosovo->Albanians were white, does that mean the Bosnians were not? So what was the flashpoint in this...it seems some trigger started this much like the "triggers" that spurs those with attention deficit syndromes into action...I think it behooves us to look at what underlies these triggers..."race" is the stinking red herring that keeps being drawn across our path to throw us off the scent....I for one want to resist this "fake to the left" I have to agree with Joe F. I don't really see anything very "leftist" in this discussion...I suspect we need the "vertical axis" of history to understand our position on the on the horizontal axis of ideology as we seek to understand the field in which our discussion takes place.. >What happens when arguments advanced by the left are >appropriated by the right? Should we disavow them, agree with >them (on this particular issue) or see what ideological purpose such >appropriations serve? But I think that this is a critical point....because of course I favor the latter...as ideologies "seem" to merge, just as in cross cultural functioning it becomes critical to be able to meta the process and attempt to understand its complexity rather than to try to parsimoniously simplify it in a reductionist approach.... >Finally, is Kosovo really that historically significant to the Serbs? ... >What's the difference, in short, between the reactiviation of national >mythology to serve present needs and agendas and a "true" >national historical feeling? Might it not be that Kosovo has become >so important to the Serbs not because of a history that extends to >the Battle of Kosovo in the 14(?) century but because Kosovo was >where the war in Jugoslavia began in 1989 and if the Serbs loose >this area as well all the hardships they've endured in the last decade >will have been for naught. I think such speculation is important....there are hardly going to be any answers here but speculation, hypotheses and suppositions....as we wrestle with what postcolonial though is about from our various perspectives... which is why I believe we "seem" to have gotten off track... but there are many perspectives represented here and I appreciate the engagements from the various.... --- from list postcolonial-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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