Black Skin, White Masks (was Re: Hegel's redemption)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>Acknowledging that in both Hegel and Marx there's an ethnocentric
>bias which was quite acceptable in their day (but it is less so
>today because we have been socialized in western societies not
>to accept it), and that the literature of the time on non-Western cultures
>was minimal, one may still argue (which is far from accept) that, as
>far as the development of self-understanding is concerned, it was
>Europe that carried that torch forward after a certain point in world
>history. That is, if we agree that it is possible to write a universal
>history in which what counts as a world-historical event consists in
>its contribution to the rise of freedom, then we can say that, at
>some point in world history, it was Europe that cultivated the kinds
>of reflective institutions necessary for the progressive realization of
>freedom. Insofar as other societies ceased to cultivate this self-
>understanding, they ceased to have history.

It was also Hegel who said "The master, however, who has interposed 
the bondsman between it and himself, thereby relates himself merely 
to the dependence of the thing, and enjoys it without qualification 
and without reserve.  The aspect of its independence he leaves to the 
bondsman, who labours upon it."  Scholastic thoughts on freedom & 
history developed by self-consciously "Western" intellectuals -- 
including Hegel & the early Marx themselves -- suffered from the 
one-sidedness that Hegel pointed out but could not apply to himself. 
Frantz Fanon & many others took up the task of clarifying the nature 
of the limited "self-understanding" that enthralled (& continues to 
blind) the investors in the Blessings-of-the-Civilization Trust. 
"The Negro is not.  Any more than the White Man" (_Black Skin, White 
Masks_).  And Fanon, in turn, was trapped in the limited 
"self-understanding" when it came to gender & sexuality....

Yoshie