[lbo-talk] Kees van der Pijl

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Fri Jun 27 06:08:37 PDT 2003


At 2:19 PM -0400 6/26/03, Doug Henwood wrote:
>>http://www.theglobalsite.ac.uk/press/212vanderpijl.htm
>
>In which he writes:
>
>>Today, the missionary ideology constructed around the
>>civilisation/barbarity dichotomy must satisfy the tastes of a
>>Western public which has developed a specific set of sensibilities
>>under conditions of sustained abundance and images of abundance.
>>Cultural permissiveness, the freedom to consume and travel, and
>>unfamiliarity with any direct experience of violence and oppression
>>(to mention a few constitutive elements only), add up to a
>>particular mental substratum on which an idealised way of life,
>>which is the good life, can comfortably rest. This ideal is being
>>continuously recycled by the media and politicians and held up
>>before us as the only legitimate form of existence. Being poor is
>>no longer just a condition that is deplorable, let alone something
>>for which the West might bear any responsibility, but proof of the
>>failure of a society to organise itself like a rich society and
>>with the rich societies-to be culturally permissive, to allow
>>freedom of consumption and travel, etcetera-brief, to be like us.
>
>Am I totally corrupted that I find a lot to recommend this "good life"?

Kees van der Pijl's article is poorly written and ill thought out, but what is at stake is not "recommendation" but direction: "a new, quasi-imperial aesthetics of righteous power by which the 'civilised' world may discipline the 'barbarians' who refuse to comply with the directives addressed to them," to use his own words (@ <http://www.theglobalsite.ac.uk/press/212vanderpijl.htm>). There's nothing new about this "aesthetics of righteous power, though.

Sometimes, I have my students examine the Vietnam War in class, using documentary films, stories written by US veterans, oral histories of Vietnamese experiences, etc. You can count on at least one of the students (sometimes a number of them) to condemn the Vietnamese for compelling children to participate in struggles for liberation, excuse the US military for killing Vietnamese children because any Vietnamese child, however young, could have been a guerrilla who was about to throw a grenade at US troops, etc. The idea in the minds of such smug students, as far as I can make out, is that Vietnamese children should have enjoyed exactly the sort of sheltered childhood like theirs -- "the good life" -- and that if they did not, it was the fault of either Vietnamese parents or Vietnamese "culture" (my students are seldom sophisticated conservatives who would fault the Communist Party). It doesn't occur to them that it was the US government that turned Vietnam into a battle ground for decades and denied the Vietnamese, young and old, chances to create and enjoy "the good life."

Exploiters and oppressors first deprive the exploited and oppressed of resources (relative social and political stability and clean water, electricity, food, etc.) to live "the good life" and then condemn (and teach their hangers-on -- or would-be hangers-on -- to condemn) the exploited and oppressed for not living (or not allowing their children to live) "the good life."

Material questions of exploitation and oppression are thus ideologically turned into cultural ones of "differences" -- between "the civilized" and "the barbarians."

To discipline "the barbarians" within, "the civilized" send the police, social workers, etc. To discipline "the barbarians" without, "the civilized" send the US troops, the French troops, UN peace-keepers, aid workers, etc. -- Yoshie

* Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://solidarity.igc.org/>



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list