File spoon-archives/postcolonial.archive/postcolonial_2004/postcolonial.0410, message 18


Date: Tue, 05 Oct 2004 10:25:30 -0400
From: Andy Belyea <andybelyea-AT-cogeco.ca>
Subject: Re: Andy re: Holy mouthful


Wow Mary - thanks very much for this.  Para two especially here gives me 
some VERY interesting food for thought re: perceived spatial/spiritual 
relationships between body and land. I think part of a non-Native 
fascination with Native cultures is directly grounded in what might be 
described as a desire for an alternative "place epistemology"--and by 
that I think I mean another way of "knowing oneself" in and through 
place other than that inherited through the sometimes simplified 
binaristic lenses of post-Enlightenment/post-Cartesian rationality which 
itself, as I see it, is maybe somehow oddly grounded in 
Judeo-Christianity's simplified heaven-hell/good-evil/(hu)man-God 
binaries.  Right or wrong, in terms of how that non-Native desire for 
some other more spiritually-legitimate and place-grounded Other plays 
out in political terms, I find it telling.  Judeo-Christianity is, of 
course, from the outset,  all ABOUT place.  And about being cursed with 
THIS one (the earth/dirt) and being booted out of THAT one (heaven/the 
"up there" somewhere).


Now that I think about it, I say "binaries" and look at your use of the 
term "boundaries" and think near-synonym.  The latter term is also one 
"bound" (pun intended) by either-or thinking:  "Here I am in this place 
(body, region, field, whatever) and NOT that one" says to me "Aha!  Only 
one epistemological possibility!  What about I-as-it or I-as-another or 
I as here-and-there some other such pantheistic epistemological or even 
ontlologial possibilities?"   Does your comment re: religiousness:   "it 
describes the meanings people develop in relation to the crossing of 
boundaries (temporal, physical, bodily), the crossing of which is 
experienced as fundamentally important to their sense of the 
significance of their locatedness in the world" suggest that all minds 
across all times "experience" or (better) "live" the world this way and 
that no boundary-less epistemology is actually possible?  In other 
words, do you think our minds are "bound by" (MUST think in terms of 
boundaries) our bodies, spatially and temporally?   This is neat stuff - 
I'd like to hear your thoughts.  Maybe the growing modern desire for and 
fascination with more holistic religions and ideas (inextricably linked 
to a global desire to globalize? Hmmmm....?) in 
still-dominantly-Eurocentric Western cultures is more a manifestation of 
the evolving human psyche than a mere disavowal of God's heaven-and-hell 
paradigm.

I am on my way this week for sure to acquire the Long and Asad texts, 
for starters, and I'll pick away at the Shiva today.

Help me out with something though - I don't get what you're saying about 
Jameson here:  what do you think he means by an "aesthetic of cognitive 
mapping"?  Somehow, marrying the terms aesthetic and mapping seems kinda 
paradoxical to me.  I think without getting that I can't make out the 
sentence in which you use it, either.



Mary Keller wrote:

> Dear Andy,
> Just to warn you, I think you might need to engage in postcolonial 
> reorientations to "religion" once you enter the terrain of land and 
> body and eco-criticism. I would suggest Charles Long's book 
> "Significations" if you want an incredible introduction to one of the 
> most important theorists of the history of religions. He has never 
> called his work postcolonial, but he is one of the smartest readers of 
> theory and writers of great history that deals with subjectivity, 
> materiality, and the impact of contact and exchange in embedded 
> geographical moments of time. Also, Talal Asad's "Genealogies of 
> Religion" serves as a foundational text for a postcolonial perspective 
> on how religion has been constructed by Western discourses noting the 
> inability of the Western construction to deal seriously with the 
> relationship of religion to struggles for power.  Chilla Bullbeck's 
> "Re-orienting Western Feminism" works as an intro text to the problem 
> of re-presenting and evaluating the agency of the "religious 
> third-world woman," as one of the most overdetermined signifiers of 
> Western discourse.
>
> When religiousness is approached from a postcolonial perspective, as I 
> see it, it no longers exists as a category to describe individual 
> beliefs or symbolic activity. Rather, it describes non-autonomous 
> models of agency, it describes power relationships with which people 
> engage to provide fundamental orientations in the world, and hence it 
> describes the meanings people develop in relation to the crossing of 
> boundaries (temporal, physical, bodily), the crossing of which is 
> experienced as fundamentally important to their sense of the 
> significance of their locatedness in the world. From this perspective 
> one can argue about ritualizations, activities whereby people mark a 
> heightened siginificance, such as seasonal festivals, the importance 
> of a river or mountaint\, the importance of activities that cross or 
> mark the body's boundaries, from eating to scarification to 
> intercourse (e.g. marriage as a ritualization that marks the proper 
> ground for intercourse). One is not arguing that a "sacred" something 
> exists out there, but rather that humans experience the approach and 
> crossing of some boundaries as so significant that the importance of 
> the power experienced in that crossing is ritualized.
> I reckon that this description moves me right into the land of ethical 
> imperialism on several fronts. Standing on the ground of a 
> postcolonial refusal of the religious/secular distinction I make 
> comparative arguments regarding the religiousness of persons whether 
> or not they self-identify as a person with beliefs. I dismiss the 
> concern with belief as the central element of religiousness and 
> instead look to practices that I can argue perform the function of 
> providing a fundamental orientation in the world. Hence, when Jameson 
> proposes the development of an 'aesthetic of cognitive mapping' to 
> serve as a 'pedagogical political culture which seeks to endow the 
> individual subject with some new heightened sense of its place in the 
> global system' (Postmodernism, p.54), I read that argument in the 
> light of a postcolonial history of religions perspective as carrying 
> religious significance.
> To return to your projejct, Martha Nussbaum has partnered with 
> economist Amartya Sen to think philosophically through concepts such 
> as capability and disparity and apply their arguments to "Women, 
> Culture and Development" to cite one of Nussbaum's works. Wendy 
> Harcourt has edited Feminist Perspectives on Sustainable Development, 
> and Rose Braidotti, Deleuzian cyber-feminist has worked for the UN to 
> theorize sustainability for the 21st century. However, Braidotti 
> largely figures the "religious" as a conservative element of culture 
> that has not been sufficiently deconstructed for its patriarchal 
> desires and therefore Braidotti is more post-structuralist than 
> postcolonial from my perspective. Vandana Shiva is one of the most 
> prolific Indian writers of an eco-feminism. As part of this holy 
> mouthful I refer you to the kind of reading list popular among 
> ecofeminism and the sacred readers: 
> http://www.maabatakali.org/Ecofeminism/ecology.htm
>
> Best wishes,
> Mary
>
>
> Dr. Mary Keller, Ph. D.
> Adjunct, Religious Studies Program
> University of Wyoming
> Independent Researcher
> 1025 Cody Ave.
> Cody, WY 82414
> ph/fax 307 587 5312
>
>
>
>
>
>> From: "Andy Belyea" <andybelyea-AT-cogeco.ca>
>> Reply-To: postcolonial-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU
>> To: <postcolonial-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU>
>> Subject: RE: new directions in poco
>> Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004 20:34:43 -0400
>>
>> "Amardeep and Sam have already gestured to shifts towards
>> environmental/ecological postcolonialism--already a massive field"
>>
>> Can anyone provide some lead-in writings on the "massive field" of 
>> eco-poco
>> hybridity herein being referred to?  This line of reasoning is 
>> central to my
>> PhD dissertation, which is exploring appropriation, authenticity, 
>> hybridity,
>> and other poco avenues of investigation as they apply equally to
>> constructions of the aboriginal "Other" and the "land as Other" in 
>> Can Lit,
>> and as shared embodiments of what needs "to be survived" in the 
>> process of
>> colonization.
>>
>> I have yet to see publications on a massive scale...I do know that 
>> there is
>> stuff out there decrying speciesism (in light of postcolonial 
>> theory), and I
>> know of some poco theory that of course refers to place as part of the
>> discourse of (especially in bodily terms) colonization, but I haven't 
>> seen
>> much by way of specific poco-ecocrit hybrids.  Or, above, are you 
>> referring
>> to only poco itself as a massive field?  Please tell me A, please 
>> tell me A.
>>
>> The merger seems natural, frankly, since both "crits" seem to frequently
>> "crit" post-Enlightenment, secular-humanist, Cartesian rationalist,
>> "Eurocentric" (although this term needs to be seriously problematized 
>> in an
>> era wary of essentializing) epistemologies.  Holy &^(* was that a 
>> mouthful.
>> The "terrain" for poco-eco investigation seems ripe for the traveling.
>>
>> Andy
>>
>>
>>
>>      --- from list postcolonial-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
>
>
> _________________________________________________________________
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>
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