Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 06:53:31
From: "Benjamin G. Lanier-Nabors" <bglncait-AT-uab.edu>
Subject: Re: West is White???? 


At 12:57 PM 4/13/99 -0400, you wrote:

>
>Also, what's interesting to me that many of the arguments I've heard on
>this list have been echoed in the Fox news network--hardly a "leftist"
>front. 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? 
>
			******
	This is a disturbing phenomenon--especially if one is on the so-called
left--n'est ce pas?  This is the point when it becomes painfully clear that
"postcolonialism" must exist in and contend with a rather dubious facet of
the postmodern world.  In addition to the Manichean allegory which
saturates western culture (and by imperial extension, the whole world), one
must confront the postmodern mode(s) of power.  Here, I take Foucault's
view of power for guidance.
	Imperialism in the postmodern world often occurs through the seemingly
benign commercialization of any opposition.  If one has a pesky Other,
simply exploit the idea by putting it on t-shirts, incorporating its
musical traditions into a popular music *product*, and highlight it on Fox
Files or Dateline or whatever.  In the process, any Other becomes merely
another Other to be *consumed* by the dominant bourgeois culture--in
today's case, "American" culture.  The "leftist" activists are left looking
like and, to a large degree, become loath dupes and servants of the empire;
the Other (you select who) becomes an exoticized gimic for a day and then,
ultimately, another product among many  (and as many have noticed, some
Others are given more currency-value than others).  Despite this, as
Foucault insisted, one must engage power--*engager*.  Nonetheless, the
"left" has to put up with being an unwilling (one hopes) guest star and
contributor to Fox broadcasting and Pat Buchanan and then has to figure out
how to counter such appropriations of themselves and of their causes.
	This is not a happy place to be in.

To the soon,
Ben
bglncait-AT-uab.edu   

At 12:57 PM 4/13/99 -0400, you wrote:

>
>Also, what's interesting to me that many of the arguments I've heard on
>this list have been echoed in the Fox news network--hardly a "leftist"
>front. 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? 
>




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