>Doug Henwood wrote:
>
>>Dabashi, who is quite against the war, nonetheless had some tough
>>words for the anti-Americans in the audience;
>>
>
>
>
>who is an "anti-american"? someone who opposes all acts of america
>purely on the basis of their being american? or are we talking
>about the "house committee on unamerican activities" kind of
>definition of "anti-american"? (i doubt its the latter, but i
>would still appreciate clarification of the term).
Well you were there, weren't you? He was arguing against the Us-vs.-Them logic that Bush and a lot of the antiwar movement have in common, though of course they valorize the two sides differently. And against the why-They-hate-Us discourse, which I'd (too unambigously) participated in. His point was that but Us and Them are very varied formations that should be "de-essentialized" (his word, not mine) - which in practical terms means that most Afghans don't like the Taliban, most Iranians don't like the mullahs, that all Americans aren't racist imperialists, that all American film isn't Hollywood (though he added quickly that Taxi Driver is Hollywood, and it's still pretty great). He also argued that a Chomskyesque critique of U.S. imperialism that sees it as the root of most evil in the world denies any agency to people elsewhere (either in resistance or in repression). He didn't say this, but he might have: Latin American landowners are very happy to have the U.S. to support repressive governments on their behalf, and South Korean capitalists are happy to have the IMF help them break unions, but there's a kind of critique that sees only Washington and Wall Street's dirty hands behind both.
Doug