On Nov 21, 2008, at 1:36 PM, shag wrote:
> ...Racial melodrama takes on enormous importance
> as the engine for the generation of legitimacy for racially
> constituted
> groups whose very claim to citizenship lies in these spectacles of
> pathos
> and action. Racial melodrama is the popular form that gives
> permission to
> these racially constituted groups to carry out actions that they
> could not
> carry out in the name of bald self-interest...
As Maccoby has shown, a strong case in point is the role of the "Passion Play" throughout history (The Nazi Oberammergau instance only being the most recent) in prompting and "justifying" the vilest forms of antisemitism.
Shane Mage
> This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it
> always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire,
> kindling in measures and going out in measures."
>
> Herakleitos of Ephesos