>Yeah, no one should judge. Guess where that comes from.
>That's what I mean about not giving up on desire. Take the
>Sati ritual for instance. People are unwilling to be critical of it
>because it makes a religious claim.... so it is covered under
>"spellbinding power" and "I have no right to interfere with the
>religious beliefs of other people even if I disagree." This is
>the surrender of desire. You give up on universality, on
>speaking your mind.
Ken, sati seems an especially poor example here. The British were in fact quite interested with ending "certain dreadful practices"; in your language desire was not interrupted or univerality thwarted or minds shut up. Who the heck are you quoting here anyway? "Spellbinding power"? No one gave this as grounds for not opposing sati, right? You made this up, correct?
The nature of the British campaign against "certain dreadful practices" and the opposition of Hindu patriarchs raise several interesting questions of course (and Spivak has generated a firestorm, so to speak, of controversy by her interpretation of both the British campaign and the patriarchal opposition). It is probably best to actually know something about how sati had been practiced throughout Indian history (with ebbs and flows it turns out) and who was subjected to the practice(the more property a woman possessed, the greater chance she was immolated in fire, suggesting sati has often been coerced in order to prevent widowed daughters in law from gaining control over the dowry they brought with them at marriage). But here we will have to investigate the system of property inheritance as well as religion (on which the imperialists and patriarchs both remained focused). And I don't know anything myself, never having read Bina Aggarwal's book on property and gender in South Asia.
However you must know that while in earlier times a Hindu woman who committed sati did indeed elevate the izzat (pride, honor) of her family and lineage, today families are better served by having women earn, say, a medical degree or win a post in the higher echelons of govt service (the goals of my cousins in India for example). There are horrifying exceptions of course. You may want to read the coverage in the Indian feminist magazine Manushi, ed. Madhu Kiswhar, of the immolation of Roop Kanwar more than a decade ago (Kanwar's sati was widely regarded to have been coereced). I lent out all my books on Indian feminism never to get them back.
Well, I didn't mean to interrupt your conversation about the world's most important social philosopher. Back to Habermas! (Do though check out the devastating critiques of him by Moishe Postone, Paul Thomas, John Rosenthal, Michael Schmid, Istvan Meszaros.) RNB