On Friday 25 November 2005 06:11, Rajarshi Guha wrote: > ... Colonialism is not the most obvious axis > of analysis for this. A better model is provided by Marxism's analysis > of labour and the progressive degrees of alienation ... > > ... is a phenomenon of advanced capitalism and I don't think is limited > to a colonized mode of subjection. Is there a way to avoid this or can > we just analyze and make people aware that "you are being subjected > and alienated"? > > ... The solution offered is an old one but insuffiecient - > it implies resisting subjection thru enlightenment - figuring out how to > use a command line instead of icons - but is that really less mediated > than a GUI? It's a different KIND of mediation but not any more closer > to a kind of truthful "essence" of a what a computer should be. This > sort of what is termed "reification" - when you set up an idea of what a > thing "really" is and set it up as an unmediated "truth", substituting > it for the thing-in-itself. Like assuming that a command promt is > inherently, by nature closer to computer-ness than a GUI.
Dear Guha The process of particular kind of 'colonialism' there was named 'nameless colonialism' which is a very postcolonial phenomenon. We described this process to its full length in our book 'margin of margin: Profile of an Unrepentant Postcolonial Collaborator'. This book deals in Post-Hegelian Post-Marxist philosophy and political economy. The field of Marxist and Post-Marxist political economy and its philosophy in a postmodern postcolonial field is my area of work for the last fifteen years or so. The Marxist viewpoint, or, better, the formulation you are using, the 'class' viewpoint is always already there, in the 'nameless colonialism'. The 'colonialism' part in the name shows its continuity with the colonial history, and the 'nameless' part shows its difference. The kind of class way of seeing that your friend must have suggested is already there. I did not go into those details in the lecture. And as you can clearly see, the relationship between GUI and this postcolonial colonialism is not that direct. That part i agree with you. But, as A Mani also pointed out, or, i read it that way, the GUI and GUI, and more importantly, GUI without the sense of the man-machine interface, which is impossible in an MSW system, from the childhood, creates a mindset that actually fosters and feeds this process of postcolonial colonialism. And question of labor process that your friend raised is already there too, when i said 'out-sourcing' as a variation on the theme of 'putting out system', where i refer to Marx's 'Capital' directly. This mindset works exactly the same way the process of 'mimicry' and 'lack' works in a colonial mind. Here, the hidden references were works of Jacques Lacan and our own works too, in this field of post-Marxist philosophy. We dealt with this to a very detailed study in our 'margin of margin'. And these things may be not so familiar to the world of computer people, but these are pretty household things in the academic world of political economy and philosophy where i belong too by my occupation and works. And so, this was not a question of if the issue could be better dealt with a Marxist Episteme, the field is already postcolonial postmodern Marxist frame of reference. The nature of the book 'margin of margin' is very technical, just meant for people in this field. But, if someone is interested, i wrote a series of essays in the last eleven years in the Bangla magazines 'Anustup', 'Apar' and 'Annya Swar', where i dealt with these things in a more easy everyday way, particularly two essays from that series may help anyone interested, one is 'margin of margin: ekta a-technical bhumika' in 'Apar', and 'colony jayni morey aajo' in 'Anustup'. Both of them are available in pdf, but, both of these essays are fairly long, around 150 pages each when they were printed in the magazines. Thanking you -- dipankar das -- To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the body "unsubscribe ilug-cal" and an empty subject line. FAQ: http://www.ilug-cal.org/node.php?id=3
