[lbo-talk] Dubya does Delhi: will the chimps make rude noises?

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Thu Mar 2 09:16:17 PST 2006


Dwayne Monroe wrote:


>Andy F:
>
>Could somebody fill me in on why she [Arundhati Roy]
>attracts so much contempt? I'm not a fan (except of
>God of Small Things), I just don't understand why she
>gets singled out.
>=====================
>
>
>Around here, there are reliable complaints which
>reappear whenever Roy's name is brought up.

My complaint is even more about the Western appetite for what she's serving than her cuisine itself. She plays "native informant" to audiences who have an almost pornographic interest in suffering and oppression - but always on a moral and emotional plane, never an analytical one. That perversely fulfills the imperial bigot's image of the Third World woman - who can feel and cry but not think. So it would be impossible, in this role, for Roy to represent Indian public opinion as being as pro-American and pro-Bush as it is (and though Pew doesn't say this, there's got to be an anti-Muslim component to it) - or even as a society with complex ethnic, religious, economic, and political divisions. No, it has to be an organic unity, opposed to the imperial bully.

Doug



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