On Friday, February 20 2009, 12:52 (+0100), Geert Lovink wrote: > if you identify with Europe or in some way do something (positive) > with the idea of Europe you are a Eurocentric.
It rather seems a typical American-vs.European linguistic misunderstanding to me. In the U.S., words like "European", "African" and "Asian" are primarily identified with color of skin and used as synonyms for "white", "black" etc. rather than being names of continents. So, if a European calls upon for a "Euro MayDay", an American may misread it as a "MayDay for white people" - which of course is just as absurd as misreading a hypothetical "North American MayDay" for white suprematism. I don't see any firm link to postcolonial theory here, only to a well-meaning, but not-very-well-reflected, backfiring politically correct language that speaks of "African Americans", "European Americans", "Asian Americans" etc. [As if a black British immigrant in the U.S. can't be a "European American" or a white South African immigrant can't be an "African American", thus inscribing de facto a 19th century racial-geographical essentialism.] -F -- blog: http://en.pleintekst.nl homepage: http://cramer.pleintekst.nl:70 gopher://cramer.pleintekst.nl # 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]
