Date: Sat, 03 Nov 2001 19:19 EST
From: Sangeeta_RAY-AT-umail.umd.edu (sr42)
Subject: responsibility--re: the current situation


I have been reading and reading and reading as so many are and thinking
about the "rise of terrorism" in "the Islamic world" etc. Rushdie's latest
posts while not as egeregious as the last one in the Washington post remains
problematic for many reasons.

However, i want to raise another questions or issue here--this may have been
raised earlier if not exactly phrased the way I am doing here.

In all these massive and minor speculations about who is to blame for the
attack on sept. 11 and the polarization of the world into civilized and
uncivilzed sections etc. I am wondering if we on the left (spanning a broad
spectrum, of course) have thought about the ways in which there has been a
rewriting of certain tenets of colonial discourse. Just to start a
discussion, perhaps, and of course at the risk of being misunderstood, once
one examines certain reports there seems to be an underlying notion that
those who perpetrated the attack and/or support the sentiments behind the
attack or the anti-west semtiment etc, could not be held responsible--extreme
poverty and abadonment by the 'west" has allowed the taliban (one could insert
another group here) to hijack the political discourse of a place etc.

Does anyone feel that this discourse is a repetition with a difference of
colonial discourse-- a kind of dismissal that can be read as dismissing the
other because they are childlike, ignorant, naive, poor--the wretched of
the earth!  I keep being reminded of fanon and his criticisms of the
bourgeois elite of new nations and was wondering if a nuanced, translated
version of that could be helpful here.

I throw this out there and do realize that this not quite coherent.

Sangeeta

Sangeeta RAY
Associate Professor
Dept. of English
Univ. of Maryland
College Park MD 20740
Email:Sangeeta_RAY-AT-umail.umd.edu (sr42)
Phone: 301-405-3837


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