Date: Thu, 30 Dec 1999 13:15:31 -0800
From: "Marlene R. Atleo" <maratleo-AT-island.net>
Subject: Re: Lenin (and Spivak), Political Economy, and


Azfar,
First I need to say that I have NEVER read Lenin as carefully or even
re-read him in depth or breadth...as obviously have you

>Garcia Marquez's words--"mixing up my ass and ashes?"
Actually, I am looking for:
Not "some kind of transcendental metaphysic of purity"
but the DIRT....of how you look back...the details of the times and
spaces...the dirt of the deep times and spaces...rather than the water bug
that skips over them....or do you write chapters that go deep....??
My undergraduate and masters work is in family development and resource
management...my inclination is to "go deep" into such issues and I see
little of that....I need to see more of the "dirt"...
I want to SEE the articulation 
as you say "through dialectical negotiations between .....A SENSE OF THE
RELATIONAL. I'm interested in this kind of Engelsian-Leninist
historiographical mode that underwrites and underlines the "relational"
rather than the so-called "real."  "

Indeed this I agree is critical....BUT who is managing the dialectic in the
relational equation...is there enough "theory" to manage it and how much of
us/you is in the dialectical project and does it matter or does it need
factoring in/out?

>nationstate stuff...I'm not, however, suggesting that Lenin...What,
>however, I'm interested >in pointing out is that  his
>insights..powerfully explanatory and praxis-oriented--which, can >always
"be stretched" strategically today - 
>-is telling me that I can--and can't--just go back to him.. But I go >back
to him with my own ideological-political-cultural baggage >which I keep
unpacking, while reading him.

OK...so you are looking for your own "dirt"...using the project as a sort
of standard....
see, I am interested in how individuals manage themselves in such a
dialectic...how they account for themselves in the historiographical
project....what kinds of transformations they go through in the process.....
which is why my questions...
and your answers were...well very satisfactory...on the whole...
Thank you very much for this engagement...

I especially appreciate the way you can develop a complex thread in the
manner only an accomplished L2 can!!!!!
you have to have been there..........:-)
cheers,
mar



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