[Xmca-l] Re: Don't do it

[David Kellogg]

Dickens is being pretty hypocritical. He was an enthusiastic
sensationalist, and an avid connoisseur of good English executions. For
example, he reserved a special hotel room next to the last hanging of two
gay men in London in the eighteen thirties, and reported on it in "Sketches
by Boz".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Pratt_and_John_Smith

Note that in "Sketches", Dickens doesn't stipulate the mysterious offense
for which Pratt and Smith were hanged, but he does defend their seclusion
at Newgate and gloats a lot over their mental torture. Also, in Oliver
Twist, written at roughly the same time, Dickens calls for lynching Fagin,
a Jew (Fagin has not actually committed any capital offense, but the judge
hangs him anyway, and the crowd, Dickens's chorus, approves). After the
Cawnpore Massacre, Dickens advocated the extermination of the whole
population of India in revenge! (Of course, he was being
sentimental--Dickens always is.)

It seems to me that we need to clearly distinguish between "racism" and
"racist sentiment". One of the interesting problems that comes up in Eunhee
Jang's excellent article on second language learning strategies from a
sociocultural point of view--a wonderful piece of "inside" work,
introducing racial issues into an area where they have never been seriously
discussed--is the use of "racist" (by the Korean kids to describe their
teacher) as an "insult".

I like the article. I think it's important work. But for that very reason,
I think that it's important to resist any attempt to reduce "racist" to a
personal insult. I think we've seen very very clearly, both in the Sessions
confirmation hearing, and in the discussion of Trump's own anti-semitic
behavior--that this kind of reduction of the political to the personal is
precisely the kind of reducing the sociocultural to the cognitive that
Professor Jang is trying to resist.

David Kellogg
Macquarie University



On Sat, Mar 11, 2017 at 11:11 AM, mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu> wrote:

> >From my personal web page, Ulvi:
>
> *Apropos Thoughts on Revolutions and Their Causes*
>
> (From C. Dickens, *A Tale of Two Cities*, Ch 15)
>
> Along the Paris streets, the death carts rumble, hollow and harsh.
>
> Six tumbrels carry the day's wine to La Guillotine. All the devouring and
> insatiate monsters imagined since imagination could record itself, are
> fused in the one realization, Guillotine. And yet there is not in France,
> with its rich variety of soil and climate, a blade, a leaf, a root, a
> sprig, a peppercorn, which will grow to maturity under conditions more
> certain than those that have produced this horror. Crush human humanity out
> of shape once more, under similar hammers, and it will twist itself into
> the same tortured forms. Sow the same seed of rapacious license and
> oppression over again, and it will surely yield the same fruit, according
> to its kind.
>
> It is the nature of the fruits sewn by the French Revolution that give
> pause for thought. And perhaps accounts for the lack of reply to your
> articulately formulated note.
>
> mike
>
>
>
> On Wed, Mar 8, 2017 at 1:32 PM, Ulvi İçil <ulvi.icil@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > If I say
> >
> > don't do it, it is imperative.
> >
> > But if I say,
> >
> > It is not realistic and you do not need it.
> >
> > It is affirmative and even  though negative, it is again affirmative, to
> > demobilize you.
> >
> > What I mean is Revolution.
> >
> > Addressed to a married couple with two children.
> >
> > With 3 thousand Turkish liras in Istanbul in a  rented home of at least
> > 1000 tl for rent.
> >
> > 1 usd = 4 Turkish liras
> >
> > Survival economics.
> >
> > Any prospect?
> >
> > No.
> >
> > That simple.
> >
> > What is socialist revolution?
> >
> > It is neither an intention nor a wish.
> >
> > It is simple necessity.
> >
>