Me: >> In fact, D's implication that European (and Japanese) supremacy was the "luck of the environmental draw" takes a lot of racist wind out of the colonialist sails. How can one justify the "White Man's Burden" by luck??<<
Louis Proyect wrote: > But nobody talks in terms of Rudyard Kipling today. < Yes, but they often _think_ that way. For example, just a couple years ago, there was a book and a “public” TV show about how English is superior to other languages. The World Bank and IMF use their financial power to push the Anglo-American financial system and "free markets" on the rest of the world. Etc. Similarly, it's totally out of fashion to be an explicit racist. But that does not mean that racist thinking, actions, and institutions have gone away. LP: > In fact, Diamond is a much more useful ideologist for the status quo since he is "multicultural".< Yes, but like the bourgeois economist David Ricardo, there seems to be stuff in his work (at least in GGS and the THIRD CHIMPANZEE) that’s worth learning, that helps us understand the historical origins of our time (specifically of the rise of W. European world-rule). I take your word that there’s nothing worth learning in D’s NEW YORKER article. Marx was extremely critical of the bourgeois ideology inherent in the political economy of his era. But that didn't mean that he saw it as totally wrong. Marx never said, for example, that the bourgeois theory of supply and demand should be totally trashed; in fact, he used that theory. Rather, the problem was that bourgeois political economy was one-sided, presenting a distorted vision of capitalism, basically because it saw supply and demand as the whole story. (This, in a very small nutshell, is his theory of commodity fetishism or the illusions created by competition.) Once he presented a better, more complete, and less ideological theory of how capitalism as a whole worked (in volumes I and II of CAPITAL) then he could put supply and demand into context, making it a better and less one-sided theory (in volume III). In sum, we can learn some stuff from D, while rejecting his BS. LP: > That being said, he wrote in his disgusting New Yorker article that the British were welcomed by the PNG tribesmen because they finally put an end to tribal violence--in other words, the same bullshit that was advanced on behalf of British rule in India.< One big problem with the British in India (and Ulster and Palestine…) was that they _created_ a lot of those divisions (or reinforced and deepened the existing divisions) and then used them to justify their rule. I don’t know if they created divisions within PNG as much as in India. After all, the country was split between a lot of ethnic groups in relatively isolated small territories before the Brits and other Europeans invaded. They likely deepened those splits, but I’ll defer to those who know the place more than I do. Me: >> In any event, the theory can and should be separated from the person who developed it. Newton was an astrologer and worse. Do we thus reject Newtonian physics? ...<< LP: > Are you comparing the guy who theorizes art and taking drugs as a way of propagating one's genes to Newton? I think a better comparison would be with Robert Ardrey.< I haven’t seen that theorizing in D’s work (though I’ll take your word that it exists). My point is that we can’t presume that D’s stuff -- specifically, the GGS hypothesis -- is totally infected with that kind of BS. I think it's a major mistake to make political arguments into personal ones, seeing someone who does bad journalism as automatically being some sort of minor devil. That's why I tried to separate D from the GGS theory. One problem I try to avoid is philosophical idealism, which among other things involves overemphasis on ideologies and individuals in understanding history. Me: >> Suppose that the authors are totally right about D's methodological problems, his reductionism and determinism. Well, though I value methodological critiques (if done well), one thing I've learned is that such critiques amount to little if the critic does not present a serious alternative. Do Errington and Gewertz have a better theory -- or do they simply give us one fact after another?<< LP: > They do have a theory. They are radical critics of capitalism. Their books is a study of the role of sugar production in Papua New Guinea influenced by Sidney Mintz's "Sweetness and Power".< I haven’t read that book, but the books and articles I've read by Mintz are good. But as I said before, D’s GGS theory is about the period before W. Europe became the center of a imperialist world system (an explanation of why W. Europe came to the top), while Mintz’s work – and that of radical critics of capitalism – is largely about the period after that. It's possible that the two views can be synthesized, applying critical thinking rather than a meat-axe. -- Jim Devine / "Unprovided with original learning, unformed in the habits of thinking, unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved to write a book." -- Edward Gibbon _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
