>"Pegging your right to represent on a scrupulous presentation of your
>life story can be a hazardous business... More important, it makes
>for a dull read. Menchu and Said's defenders claim, rightly, that any fibs
>on their heroes'
>parts don't ultimately change history. But only a dimwit would
>believe it wasn't Menchu's personal story that helped warm those
>frigid hearts in Oslo.
Here we get to the heart of the matter, eh Brad? The important thing is not human rights, identity, or self-determination, it's prizes and medals and beatification by the important and responsible members of the international community (hey, we can still torment Guatemalans if we give a nice prize to a Guatemalan).
(Btw, the Nobel homebase is Stockholm; Oslo is merely where the handing-out ceremonies are done. You'd think with all of Si Newhouse's money floating around that Suck could afford a fact-checker.)
>Even if we accept her
>defense that she was writing a testimonio - through which one
>represents the group's experiences as one's own - what does that
>tradition mean? It means generations have judged that someone else's
>experience is more compelling if you tell it like it happened to you.
>And on that point, West and East and North and South agree. It's just
>that other cultures are more sophisticated. Where we waste
>energy discrediting our Binjamin Wilkomirskis and Jerzy Kosinskis,
>they simply invent a new genre for them..."
blah blah blah witty blah blah "unconventional" "insight" blah blah blah wired blah blah look at us blah blah blah aren't we cute blah blah conde naste blah blah blah
Eric