>From: Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu>
>Reply-To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>Subject: Re: cultural imperialism
>Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2001 17:44:13 -0600
>
>
>
>Doug Henwood wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > Zizek makes the point that some of the loudest protests against the
> > U.S. come from the displaced bourgeoisies (and their intellectuals)
> > of second-tier powers - the prime example being France.
> >
>
>So? This sounds utterly banal. For several millenia the loudest
>complaints about _any_ ruling class have come from either the same
>ruling class or other ruling classes jealous of it. Could this have
>something to do with the fact that its ruling classes that ordinarily
>are the only classes that have a voice at all?
Yeah. The anti-imperialist movements in the third world were almost all led by perfectly bourgeois people, sometimes from displaced elites, sometimes from elites precisely created by the imperialist powers. Does this delegitimize their anti-imperialism?
Which is why remarks like this:
>1 Western domination of the Middle East provoked the attack on >September
>11
>
>The perpetrators of the World Trade Center and Pentagon were not oppressed
>victims of Western domination, but mostly wealthy or middle class Arabs
>from the Gulf States. Not the grinding poverty of the Gaza Strip, but the
>conspicuous consumption of Saudi Arabia proved the seedbed for Al-Qaeda.
>September 11 was roundly denounced throughout >the Middle East.
are so ahistorical! And what's really dangerous about the notion is that it's always used to dismiss bourgeois criticism as not "authentic". It's not as if the proposition couldn't be criticized on many other grounds, so why this one?
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