On Sun, 21 Oct 2007 10:23:54 -0400 Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
writes:
>
> On Oct 21, 2007, at 9:48 AM, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> > If you have a lot of
> > formal education or a great deal of uncommon talents like Marjane
> > Satrapi's artistic gift, you are likely to make much more money in
> the
> > West than in Iran or anywhere else in the South for that matter.
>
> So, in other words, the materialism of the West - which Satrapi
> denounces from Paris, the echt cosmopolitan city, and you denounce
> from Columbus, the echt middle-American city - has charms that trump
>
> the revolutionary appeal of building the new Islamic society. It's
> not like they're eating tree bark and beetles in Tehran, either.
> That
> sounds to me like desk-chair radicalism that barely pauses, if at
> all, to take note of its own contradictions.
>
> You relocated yourself from Japan - certainly not a poor country -
> more than ten years ago. Why? Is there some appeal to the American
> way of life that's caused you to stay here for a decade?
One could probably ask the same question of two 19th century exiles from Germany who came to England to spend of their lives following the 1848 revolutions.
I suspect that years after those uprisings, both men could have safely returned to Germany but they never did. Perhaps, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels too fell prey to the charms of British imperialism.
Jim F.
>
> Doug
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>