dear ranjith, i don't think those quotes from ambedkar is what i would call polemics... they are theoretical propositions with a life time of action, thought and research behind them.. anyway i am not getting into a discussion on polemics or ambedkar.. however, check out this link if interested... http://foucault.info/foucault/interview.html (let me tell you in advance that i am not at all a foucault-devotee, and that i find this useful only as a work that i would read alongside what kancha iliaha has to say about polemics..)
now about the other things you were saying... i thought you were feelign pushed to a corner and that is why you were using this mode... however now you are claiming that this mode, which i expressed discomfort with, is comign from a dalit counterhegemonic perspective.. (the article u were quoting by a mentor, is also saying the same, is it not???) and you are calling it the 'new language of assertion'... actually, i think you both are seeing hegemony and counterhegemony as simple binaries. .. as black feminist thought has shown, one is always caught in overlapping structures of power, so even when you are working out a counterhegemonic strategy, you might at the same time also be asserting some other kind of hegemony in some other way.. in other words, your dalithahujan assertion can be a masculinized one...and i think it is...and i also feel that one of the major problems with the identity politics of caste is that it often gets framed in masculinized terms... about the anandi lakshman debate. do you see that in this debate, only an uppercaste vellala woman and a dalit man has spoken? has any dalit obc or minority feminist expressed her views on this debate??? don't you think if they do they would have something different to say than laxman ? in fact, i know of an unpublished paper, which goes forward from where laxman stops and takes the debate further into the realm of dalit bahujan feminism.. about the question of alliance and identity politics, which dileep and ranjith is talking about. i think both are ways of being political, with its own possibilites and problems. (i personally/politically belong more to the identity political group, inspite of problems, as christy puts it, but would not shy away from postmodern interrogations...) however, let me repeat what i initially said....when there is all this debate about alliance versus identity politics i cannot help see a lot of similarity between dileep and ranjith... ranjith wants everyone to be subsumed into dalit male politics, and dileep wants everyone to be part of alliance politics...each one feels he is right, and that all "others" are fascistic/savarna... this kind of attitude - marks a lot of discussions in kerala. is this the only way in which people can debate? do we have to adopt a masculine pose of fierceness, fighting, putting down, competing. disparaging, so as to engage in causes??? what would have happened if subaltern women had gained leadeship to subaltern movements???? would they also have gone the same way??? these are some of the things (among others) that this discussion here made me think about.. so these discussions are not as negative as i myself am makign it out to be... :) however, all this is taking up too much of my limited time and energy and so i withdraw from this debating and from now on i will continue to remain a silent member as before.. love and peace, jenny rowena > -- > (All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are > Brave) --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/greenyouth?hl=en-GB -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
