On Apr 16, 2007, at 12:08 AM, Anthony D'Costa wrote:
The Roy posts were illuminating. They illustrate how difficult it is to position yourself on the left if you are materially and professionally successful. In fact virtually all academics would fit this bill and academics are most prone to such attacks. Though these days any middle class individual (self-identified or income-determined) would be guilty of not sharing the peasant/proletariat identity/experience.
I don't approve of attacks on leftists because they're "privileged." It generally requires some privilege to get the time, perspective, and education to be a critic. "Organic" intellectuals are pretty rare, and once they achieve any recognition, are likely to become less organic with time. Who can blame them, either? My pal Sean Jacobs used to use a lyric from a Brazilian samba as a sig quote - only intellectuals love poverty, poor people love luxury. But intellectuals most love the poverty of others - it makes them authentic. Part of my problem with Roy is that a lot of her western fans don't get any of this. For them, she performs the role of native informant - emotions rendered in florid prose, as one expects of the exotic. But I'm not going to persist in this. I heard a story of an appearance by Rigoberta Menchu many years ago in a radical chic venue in north London. The audience loved her while she was the authentic Indian in her native dress. But when she alluded to Lenin's quote about rural electrification plus Soviet power, the audience turned on her. Ok, so Sardar Sarovar is a brutalist project - how then to get electricity to rural India? Doug
