> here in colonial America, the very FIRST form of popular literary
> genre (after the sermon) was the Captivity Narrative.
>
there was a similar thing in australia; the most infamous instance being eliza frazer (whom an island is still named after), who claimed she was held in slave-like conditions, subject to all sorts of horrors, including witnessing cannibalism - 'events' she was to later go on a speaking tour of england to relate. now, it all turned out to be so much rubbish, but these fantasies have returned in the form of 'one nation' (there's a telling moniker) now claiming that aborigines have no 'moral superiority' so as to justify their claims that it was(is) british invasion which visited horrors upon them, exemplified by the charge that aborigines ate their children (i kid you not - the accusation of baby-eating is making a comeback).
these are two similar narratives in evidence from different periods of australian history which point to a continuity in the structural elements of that particular fantasy. both play out a repulsion/fascination thing, which is always a sign of fantasy. the question is how are such fantasies to be destroyed, sapped of their ability to fascinate and do the work they do? do we claim that they are false, as has been the generalised response here? i would argue no, in the same way that to argue that australia is not in fact being 'swamped by asians', that australia will not be a majority 'asian' population by 2060 (as one nation also insist,) is to immediately give credence to the fear that 'being asian' would be a problem, a fundamental change in 'our way of life'. both one nation and its ostensible opponents are claiming that we should 'protect our way of life', that 'our way of life' is by definition not 'asian' - they merely disagree over the demographic projections. the same fantasy is still intact on both sides of this 'divide'.
so, when charles writes:
> So,in this case the
> answer to your question
> is which knowing of the thing
> helps us to change it, to abolish it,
> turn it into its opposite.
> The Marxist epistemological
> test is practice.
>
i agree (as well as applauding charles for not reducing marxism to a form of rationalism or empiricism as some have been doing recently with regard to these debates, and as i kinda wanted to provoke with the rendition of 'marxian rationalism'). but another question follows from this: do we abolish the fantasy? - that 'black men want to rape white women', that the 'other' wants to steal 'my' enjoyment (a point zizek shows very well), that the 'other' enjoys too much, etc. - through reference to the facts: 'no, this is not true'? zizek argues this does not work, and i find his argument persuasive, not least because - for instance - every time someone stands up and says 'one nation are idiots', 'it is not true that we are being swamped by asians', matters only become worse.
it's almost as if the rationalist and empiricist denials feed the fantasy rather than sap it of its strength. i'm beginning to think this may well be because 'common sense epistemology' is deeply suspicious of rationalism (seeing it as sheer political performance) and empiricism ('the statistics can be made to say anything'). in short, enlightenment strategies don't work - if they ever did - to abolish fantasies such as these.
and, on whether marx was an 'enlightenment thinker' or not, i would have to say no he wasn't. why else would he begin 'capital' with an analysis of the commodity other than as a way of taking us through the fantasies of political economy. he does not immediately declare political economy wrong, he develops an immanent critique, one which finds the truth of capital internal to the structure of political economy's concepts, evasions, denials, and truths.
angela