Comments on Stoll vs. Menchu

[William S. Lear]

On Tue, December 22, 1998 at 09:30:12 (-0500) Louis Proyect writes:
>...
>       .... That is, the only thing he can put in the place of what he
>considers Menchu's inadequately representative testimony are...other
>testimonies: other texts, narratives, voices, in which (it will come as no
>surprise) he can also find things that he might want to hear.
>
>We know something about the nature of this problem from Wittgenstein and
>modern philosophy. There is not, outside of human discourse itself, a level
>of facticity that can guarantee the truth of this or that representation,
>given that "society, culture, and political economy" are not ontological
>essences prior to representation, but rather themselves the consequence of
>struggles about and over representation. ...

What pompous nonsense.  We need Wittgenstein to tell us about the
problems inherent in interpreting facts?


>It would be yet another version of the "native informant" of classical
>anthropology to grant testimonial narrators like Rigoberta Menchu only the
>possibility of being witnesses, but not the power to create their own
>narrative authority and negotiate its conditions of truth and
>representativity. ...

Hmm, "negotiate its conditions of truth", eh?  So, we of course would
grant to the government the same rights?  We would allow the death
squads the power to create their own "representativity"?  Would
Beverly defend Jeanne Kirkpatrick in the same terms because we could
only find "other texts, narratives, voices" with which to refute
Kirkpatrick's absurd claims that the murdered Sister Maryknoll (sp?)
nuns were really agents of the Communist Insurgency?

Yes, yes, yes.  Menchu was probably attacked by someone with "an
agenda".  But, if she knowingly told falsehoods, that is not something
to be defended.  It goes without saying, of course (but on mailing
lists you sometimes have to be explicit for some reason) that the
crimes committed against Menchu's community for which she speaks
outweigh any peccadillo she may have committed in print.  But I just
can't support this "everyone has a right to negotiate their own
conditions of truth" BS.  You have the right to tell your version of
the story, and if your version is inconsistent with the facts, you
should be held accountable.

Bill