Date: Sun, 30 Jul 2000 11:58:05 -0700 From: "Marlene R. Atleo" <maratleo-AT-island.net> Subject: Re: White knights - Dave.. Dave: Tsk, Tsk....while I empathize with your patience running out...especially when Eric keeps saying that he is English....we do need to remember that he does admit to being half Dutch on the maternal side which would make his "mother's tongue" Dutch...so don't get fooled by the fact that he writes in English and lives in Holland.....so that he is technically an English man living in his mother's land....which was liberated from the Facists by the English........merely a note about facts as stated by Eric.... And again...perhaps you need reminding that Eric's opening gambit was about language - writing in minority languages - we need to remember that is what he does - he is a TRANSLATOR - translating into/out of Swedish, Estonian, Dutch, Afrikaans (?) and possibly others that he hasn't mentioned.......so Eric gets around....and his interest in european/non-racial poco is very logical.... Translators have to remain in a meta position to move between language and if translating between the ethos of several "cultures" it would require pertinent cultural fodder which can be gathered in a variety of ways through period writings, travel, living in cosmopolitan centers, reading periodicals and newspapers and of course engaging with the "locals" of each.... While some of us may be involved in real politik and seek to theorize about it as you, Dave, say, to gain some reflective insight into it/ourselves - to create spaces in which to live - I would imagine that this may be the space in which the translators live plying their trade.... While some of us might seek to develop theory in which to find "common ground" at levels of abstraction in which to communicate and comment on translations....a translator probably needs the "raw material of argument" with which to understand what is happening on ground zero from which the discussion is originating....since the translator needs to be accountable for all the levels of ethos and particularly the one that is usually the most elusive because of change is the one on the ground.... probably why taxi driving can be particularly useful research.... Someone mentioned Kristeva (marlene takes out the canon and swings it into the poco crowd....;-))) who, in "Strangers to Ourselves" (1991, Cambridge: p. 181: Translation by Roudiez) says: "The foreigner is neither a race or a nation. The foreigner is neither glorified as a secret Volksgeist nor banished as disruptive or rationalist urbanity. Uncanny, foreignness is within us: we are our own foreignness, we are divided." While theory may help some of us structure "das Umheimliche", the uncanny, others may want to keep it repressed, a secret and harness the power of the "strangeness/erotic/exotic" in the liminal space where the divide meets....after all where would the entertainment/travel/sex industries be without it.... And while Sangeeta may find what has been happening on the list exciting while others are frustrated with it...it may suggest particular differences in structure of those realms of experience on the ground...how it works ......some others may find it boring/negative/positive/ painful whatever...suggesting another kinds of structuring of those realms of experience...(for a great theoretical piece on how motivational structuring creates states of boredom/excitement etc...depicted via brain scans....see: http://www.swin.edu.au/sbs/pub/rt/rtscan1.htm The bottom line is that some of us may be engaged in the tensions of the uncertainty of real politik that don't write so well in English and the "disconcerted logic" that doesn't translate well from one ethos to another to suit the transpersonal psychological modus operandi of others... I don't mind a conversation but I reserve the right as do you Dave to be my own translator....that is what I expect from poco ....not to be "liberated" by anyone.... Marlene R. Atleo, PhD Candidate, EDST, UBC ?h ?h naa tuu kwiss - Ahousaht First Nation, Nuu-chah-nulth "We only become what we are by the radical and deep-seated refusal of that which others have made of us" Franz Fanon Mining the mind: Resource extraction in the "new" frontier. --- from list postcolonial-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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