Thanks, Kali. It indeed sounds harsh but we have to distinguish here between the theory and those who put it into action. There is nothing wrong with post-colonialism as a theory. I was talking about its agents. Remember marxism and how that was turned into an ideology and misused by brutal regimes the world over. Unfortunately, there is no relation between the content of a certain set of ideas and those who spread and 'execute' it in the world out there. I suppose you do not live in Europe, so you don't have to deal with this particular issue. I always admired Alex Foti and his positive defintion of Europe in an attempt to take it back from the EU Brussels bureaucrats, the national political elites, and the boring liberal-conservative cultural connotations this concept surrounds. Europe is the ideal construct to exclude others, be they from the South or the East. That's what Fortress Europe is all about. It is not just it's colonial history... It is the actual migration policies that make people decide never to use this word again in a positive way -- in particular not to organize subversive forces on this continent in an attempt to overrule the fear- driven populist right that mobilizes against the EU and Europe in general in order to save their phantasma of ethnic pure nation states.
With regards, Geert # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [email protected]
