on the map & sennett

rc-am rcollins at netlink.com.au
Sat Jul 31 13:56:00 PDT 1999


Michael c wrote:


> No doubt there is 'america' as hegemon, but what also is 'america' as
cultural
> cynosure. and perhaps therefore an american vocabulary is inter alia a
global
> vocabulary (alongside post-colonial authenticities). maybe something about
how
> subjectivity (being human as such) is now sublimated into various statues
of
> liberty and consumer utopias.?

not just post-colonial authenticities, but perhaps also alongside a re-configured euro vocab, which i'm not entirely sure, but i hazard, might be inherent in the differences between the Declaration of the french revolution and the american constitution. the former seems to make no distinction between the 'rights of man' and the 'rights of the citizen'; the latter seems to have little concept of the 'rights of the citizen' and the 'rights of man' are derived from god. is that right?

a related question, though. most countries have political parties who's indexes are either: workers'/peoples'/etc; or have some directly religious significance; or are (like australia) within the euro tradition of christian democrats/liberal/labour/conservative/etc. i never understood why in the US, the two main parties were called democrat and republican. is this because of something to do with the above? (here, the two are liberal and labor -- very british and euro.)


> > I take it you've seen the
> > film Once Were Warriors, or are about to see its sequel?
>
> yes. what do you know about the sequel?

not much, only seen the rave reviews. it's supposed to be the story of the redmeption of the father, his return to the family. but i doubt it will be this direct a path in the film. the author of the novels on which the films are based regards the warrior figure as recoverable today through the figure of the entrepreneur, the self-reliant, self-employed, or said as much in an interview of his i read a while back.

Angela _________



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