>Western feminists are often SHORING UP imperialist
structures that deny women's rights elsewhere. Really? Examples?<
a regular columnist for a melbourne broadsheet has written every second or so column over the last two years arguing for population control, specifically and explicity, the control of women's bodies in third world countries by way of various world bank (etc) schemes (eg, the tying of aid to declines in fertility, the dominance of fertility control as a proportion of overall health care aid) because according to her a) this is something for the whole planet; and b) this is a feminist politics. whether she is a feminist or not, who can say, but what is sure is that she would not be saying this so easily and without challenge (and i mean not one challenge!) without this jingle about concern for women.
that would count as the most proximate example that springs to mind.
but if you mean that eagleton is not being careful, then yes, he isn't. right throughout the review he uses spivak as his voice to level a critique of those he wouldn't usually get away with doing if "he" was saying it... and to lambast spivak for not being man enough to "bring it all to a head".
terry wrote:
>more a symptom of that Reason than a solution to it.<
or it might just be that spivak's writing is both symptom and subversion, but perhaps not in equal measure for all that. and the difference between it, or anything else, going one way or other doesn't lie within the theoretically reasoned adventures of either a spivak or an eagleton does it? the most intellectuals can hope to do is jump on the bandwagon of movement in order to convince themselves, in restrospective accounts written by those same intellectuals, that, yes, the philosophers' interpretation did change the world!
> If Spivak has an uncannily keen nose for Western cant, patronage and
hypocrisy, she is notably reluctant to break ranks. <
i'd say she's quite often perveived to have broken ranks, which is why she's so often presented in whining and bitter terms. racism can be enjoyed in all sorts of ways. for academics of good conscience, it's as if others should do what they have not been willing to do themselves: for what would be the sign of breaking ranks really short of publicly resigning as an academic? when did eagleton resign exactly?
> There can thus be few more important critics of our age than the likes of
Spivak, Said and Homi Bhabha, even if two of that trio can be impenetrably
opaque. <
inscrutable? i don't recall eagleton taking macheray to task for being impenetrably opaque.
> unpleasantly narcissistic<
note to eric: i swear i have an immense difficulty comprehending most of the writings of subcommandante marcos of the EZLN, and i'm told that this is because it is steeped in the mythic stories of chiapas and mexico. and i swear that i still can't make head or tail of recent conversations on this list on the US business cycle and spending, no matter how hard i tried (and then got easily distracted), because i assume its steeped in the mythic stories of washington commentators and the US treasury. but it's never occured to me to argue that this is the fault of those who talk like this, as if there should be a universal idiom, that it should be mine or defer to mine. wouldn't that be an unpleasant kind of narcissism?
why would spivak, bhabha or said have to write in language that eagleton, or you or i, understand? why is it so easy to forget that an idiom is learned? said mentions someplace that the only adults who never really forget this are those who come from a culture and language which is either marginal or different to the one in which they write and work. perhaps this remembrance makes demands that 'everyone should write so everyone can understand' sound incredibly hypocritical. who knows? it sounds like that to me.
ps, rakesh, i hope everything's well.
Angela _________