Postmodern Cover for Gitlin's 'Yes'

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

from Christian to t:
>> 'the recolonization of yugoslavia': as though YU were a solid,
>> homogeneous, and abiding entity that merely and passively was sub-
>> ject to the wills and wiles of great powers. 'yugoslavia' is the
>> name for what seems to have been the very transient period during
>> which the great powers exerted less direct influence over the re-
>> gion; but it was formulated through the very aggressive suppres-
>> sion of its component cultures--basically, *tito* colonized it.
>
>More seriously, a couple of things. First, which is it? You object to the
>use of "colonization" on the basis of some postruc-esque argument ("It's not
>identical to itself; therefore it can't be colonized." [?] ) Then, you claim
>that Tito colonized it by way of "aggressive suppression of its component
>cultures" at a time when the great powers had no interest in Yugoslavia.
>(Evidently, Tito can render YU's citizens powerless, homogenous, and passive
>in a way that others cannot. Interesting, though how do you figure?)

To recycle Carrol's posts on nominalism:

*****
"It is always possible . . .to stumble across a more fervent nominalist
than oneself."
Terry Eagleton, *The Ideology of the Aesthetic*, p.380

Carrol
*****
"David Jennings [MSAI]" wrote:
> .. But whence the fervor?

Eagleton makes this remark in the course of a critique of Foucault, in
which he notes that Foucault's concept of "The Prison" is a rather
totalizing concept, which can be dissovled by a Foucaultian
nominalistic critique of Foucault. Whereas socratic irony is a game
only one can play nominalism is a game many can play until
all human thought is reduced to mumbling. Abstract attacks on
planning, for example, self-destruct in this way.

Actually, I had none of this in mind when I posted the quotation.
I just thought it was cute.

Carrol
*****

Yoshie