Experience suggests that this is not a very effective approach. It's goodd to have refutations and critiques in hand, for example, s critique of political econonomy, one might call it Capital. But it is unlikely to persuade those with the strongest interest in the existing order, but rather to deligetimate them in the eyes ofthose with less interest. And when oppressors change their minds it is often because of other considerations than appeals to evidence and logic. Many Southerners who might have unthinkingly accepted racist assumptions in the 50s and 60s were shocked and horrified by photos in the 60s of fire hoses and dogs turned on nonviolent protestors; the Thurmonds and Wallaces changed their tune in part on civil rights when the faced large numbers of black voters.
>
> >That one could not enjoin those cultures to accept
> western norms of rationality without the conquering
> occurring in the first place is what has led to
> enormous skepticism about the benefits of them. <
>
Well, this is subject to obvious replies. Is it illegitimate to enjoin Nazis who accept norms of rationality, which they rejected in favor of appeals to Volksgeist and Blut? In fact, if norms of rationality are relative, ours are as good as any, so why not impose them on some stone age people who have different views? They are _our_ norms after all, and these norms do not say, respect the irrational norms of Others. We accept them rather because we think they are _correct._ Of course wea re also good liberals who think that people whould be entitledto make their own msitakes as long as they do not harm others. But those are liberals norms, just as if not more so ethnocentrically Western than "Western" norms of rationality and logic.
jks
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