So you agree?
>> It seems both unnecessary and suspicious to exoticise theorisation of
>> this or that foreign culture, as Galloway did on your radio show,
>> surprisingly with your agreement, regarding Arab/Muslim reactions and
>> their adopting the master narrative regarding their own worth -- as
>> Feyerabend might have said, what colourful arias to explain
>> [avoiding] the obvious!
>
> You mean it's wrong to explore what colonization does to individual
> and collective psyches? Presumably if colonization is bad, it has to
> have bad effects, or it's not so bad after all.
I won't pass judgement on explorations of the psyches of others, but it may be worth answering what purpose it serves? The bad effects of colonisation have been explored and understood (in common sense i.e., obvious as well as academic explanations), after all, albeit without need to refer to psyches. Colonisation by the British limited my parent's choices, the freedoms of their generation, their ability to enjoy the fruits of their work, etc, etc. Hence it is bad. And had to be opposed. And so on. Now I guess if we have more time we could explore if my dad wet his pants as a result of his feeling of inferiority ;-) <-- ok, I am kidding (by misrepresenting you wilfully), but more below...
> I thought Galloway
> was exactly right in saying that 9/11 conspiracism in the Muslim
> world flows in part from a belief that only white guys could pull
> something like that off. A lot of white 9/11 conspiracists would
> agree, sadly.
There are a range of assumptions above:
a) That believing that "only white guys could pull something off" is a "conspiracy". b) That the Muslim world believes so because they believe in some inherent superiority
of "white guys". c) That 9/11 "conspiracists" believe the same thing for the same reasons.
I believe all of them are wrong, or at least poorly established. For a long time, it was valid to believe that only white guys would win in the game of cricket. Recent asinine Indian masala movies notwithstanding, this reflects no inferiority complex on the part of brown people, or the belief in inherent superiority of whites. Rather, it was a reflection of the state of things (a result, obviously enough, of the very thing that the brown guy and girl was fighting against).
Ockham would be glad.
Now I supposed we could alternatively or additionally propose that the brown guy and girl have subscribed to the master narrative, has internalised the white guys view of affairs, etc. (this, unintentionally, is pretty close to what some conservatives say about black achievement, which they blame on a "victim mentality", albeit with the twist that the creation of the "mentality" is also blamed on the master). But such speculation has to meet a heavy burden of proof, to be taken seriously, by my book.
--ravi