On 10/25/06, Louis Proyect <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Yoshie:
>By Western leftists I mean leftists in the USA, the EU, and Japan.
>The term is indeed too broad, for some leftists somewhere in the West
>may be doing well unbeknownst to me. Given my own experience and
>people I most often talk to on the Net, I'm most often thinking of
>leftists in the USA, the UK, and Japan, the major problems in the
>world.
You don't seem to realize that this comes across as an epithet in the
manner of Perry Anderson's excoriating use of "Western Marxism". You also
don't seem to realize that the term is a kind of subtle exploitation of the
Orientalist discourse except used in reverse. Leaving aside your specious
inclusion of Japan, it is obvious that Western is a category that is
dialectically opposed to Eastern in the sense of Iran, Lebanon, Syria, etc.
I myself would never think of using the term Eastern to describe
governments or movements but you seem to rely heavily on the term Western
to essentialize your ideological adversaries. The term conjures up images
of epicene tenured professors in places like Boston or New York City
signing petitions circulated by Joanne Landy and clucking their tongues at
the latest article in the NY Times calling attention to Ahmadinejad's
latest gaffe.
You can call them leftists in rich countries or leftists in the global
North if you like. To me, they all mean the same thing, except
"Western leftists" has a virtue of brevity.
--
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>
<http://mrzine.org>
<http://monthlyreview.org/>
