>From the small town in which I grew up ringed as it was and remains by
Native Reserves to Johannesburg where I spent some of my teenage life, I
have always encountered the use of the word civilised and civilisation to
enumerate who was in the category of human, who was not, and who could
potentially be.
There is a reason why you won't find (at least very rarely) ANC propaganda or expressions for Native Self-government in Canada couched in terms of "civilisation". I suspect, although I do not know, the same is probably true of the struggle for Civil Rights in the US. You will however, find much of the discourse of Vervoort's apartheid project and the colonial project in Canada couched in civilisation terms.
It behoves someone like Chomsky, who is trained as a linguist and who operates in and through language (as we all must) to choose his words cautiously. That he chooses not to is of course his businesses. Nobody would have a problem censuring the use of word that in many circumstances had misogynous or sexist connotations.
Do I think if I pressed Chomsky on this point that he would concede the problematic nature of the world civilisation or civilised? Probably. Is everyone who uses the "N" word racist? Probably not. Could one be forgiven for thinking they were. Probably.
Travis
> It's interesting how much misreading - deliberate?- there has been of
> Chomsky's "imcomparably more civilized" comment and of anyone who agreed
> with it.
>
> I'd urge anyone else planning to make any more comments on the "civilized"
> thread to re-read the passage in the Chomsky interview first.
>
> To clarify:
>
> 1) No one - Chomsky or anybody on the list - implied the war was
civilized.
>
> 2) No one implied the US or its government was civilized enough, or as
> civilized as we'd like it to be.
>
> 3) No one said the US was "the most civilized nation" or more civilized
than
> other nations. The contention was that the US was more civilized than it
had
> been in the *past.*
>
> 4) It is kind of OBVIOUS that neither Noam Chomsky nor anyone who posts
> regularly to a left listserv would agree with points 1-3. It's also kind
of
> obvious that NC does not hold some racist idea of what a civilization is.
>
> 5) Chomsky - and those of us inclined to agree with him - never said
> progress was automatic or inevitable. His point was that social movements
in
> this country had had some success in improving the place.
>
> Finally, I think it's actually an crucial question, how the US is both
more
> civilized than it used to be, and how it is not, because the question is
> really about how has the left succeeded, and how have we failed. We have
> failed to create a world in which workers and citizens have more power
than
> capital - quite the reverse, because capital is in fact more powerful than
> it used to be. The working class has gotten much weaker. In that sense,
the
> US is much less civilized and more profoundly barbaric than 40 years ago.
> That's something I and many (perhaps most) people on this list spend much
> of our time trying to figure out how to change.
>
> But in the ways that Chomsky and others were talking about -- the position
> of women, tolerance for sexual diversity, less Jim Crow-type racism, more
> awareness of human rights, more people more easily mobilized to fight for
> social justice and protest the government, the way parents (especially
> fathers) relate to their kids, awareness of environmental issues -- it is
> indeed incomparably more civilized. That took lot of work, and the people
> responsible deserve a lot of credit. Those things are not easily
dismissed,
> and they affect the everyday existence of almost everybody who lives in
the
> US. If we didn't have such victories to point to, to show that social
> movements do change things, why would we join them? Better to accept the
way
> things are and help individuals (volunteer in soup kitchens) or get on
> America's good side (become as obscenely rich as possible).
>
> Liza
>
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