At 00.36 +0200 96-01-06, K.N Hungwe wrote:
>My problem is that I am not always sure how others are using the terms.
This should not be YOUR problem only. In this electronic medium where I
have, for example, a message of no more than 200 words from which to know
Kedmon Hungwe, it is safe to assume that I can rarely be sure how others
are using their vocabulary. There will always be room for questions at the
most important points, as well as at the edges. The work of ensuring
compatibility should, preferably, be distributed all over "this network"
(as they used to phrase it in the 80s). Isn't it when the un-sureness is
not shared, that it becomes YOUR problem. And MY problem?
Your examples, of how the East and the West have been and still are
contrasted for different purposes, point at how the dichotomy for one thing
is used according to different criteria of East-ness and West-ness. Posing
capitalist democracy against communist totalitarianism in the Cold War
rhetoric. Posing the mystic Orient against the rational Occident in
colonial rhetoric. Racial rhetoric of posing White against Yellow. And
isn't it the case that although criteria are presumably stated at some
point, once they have been packed into the dichotomy they are not unpacked
every time the dichotomy is wielded? The East/ /West dichotomy must have
been very useful indeed for its racial, colonial and Cold War purposes by
neatly packaging the stuff of the world in us-them categories that included
overlapping and even incompatible criteria, which were not scutinized too
closely. Just because of the neat packaging. It was useful because of
obscuring the messy and dirty confusion it covered. By messy I mean the
vagueness and internal contradictions, by dirty I mean the injustices
facilitated by it.
There is the exclusion of any "third" in the trope of a dichotomy: a logic
of the "exclusive or" (XOR for programmers) where what is made to exist --
what is relevant in this rhetorical world -- is EITHER East OR West.
Everything that counts, fits neatly into one of the categories. There is no
"both" and no "neither". No uncertain, blurred boundaries that would
warrant un-sureness as to how others use the vocabulary. And what must be
deemed "neither", if looked at, is simply made invisible, irrelevant, a
non-entity. Wasn't that the case with Japan in the Cold War rhetoric
oriented towards the Eastern bloc?
regards from North to South
Eva
who just happened to have read Chomsky's reminiscences
of the University in the Cold War years
>I am not sure what we mean by Western and non-Western. The discussion so far
>seems to suggest that the we can divide ourselves into the West, and the
>Other
>world. If that is so, what criteria shall we use? Do we use national
>boundaries? And if so, which countries are included and why? During the
>Cold
>War there was the West and the East separated by the Iron curtain. At that
>time the West referred to countries that were capitalist in their mode of
>production, politically free and with democratic institutions etc. That
>categorization adds another layer of meaning. But is Japan part of the West?
>Opinions vary. Australia is part of the West despite its Eastern
>geographical
>location. Is it a racial distinction, and if so, does this make sense
>when at
>this point in history the diversity of national populations is increasing
>rapidly Is the distinction between Japan and Australia historical, and
>if so history within what time frame and what assumptions? I have not yet
>decided whether the western/non-western science distinction is useful or
>illuminating.
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