Re: Post-Colonialism & "Modernizing the Un-modern" (wasRe:Prostitution, Disease, and Race)

[Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Mine:

>Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> > >BTW, I don't think of the agenda of "modernizing the unmodern" is
> > >necessarily racist or humanist.  Kemalism & many other nationalisms
> > >were modernizers, and so were the Soviets -- no?  It all depends >upon
> > >who practices modernization, what the content of modernization is,
> > >for what purpose it is practiced, and what effects it produces.
>
>Neither Kemalists nor Soviets were imperialists. They were modernizers without
>being imperialists. They did so many good things for women in the sense of
>transforming old fashioned patriarchal structures and advancing the
>status of women
>in society.

Exactly.  One of my criticisms of post-colonialism is its blanket
condemnation of modernization & failure to make a distinction between
the "modernization theory" of imperialism and modernization brought
about by socialist revolutions or progressive nationalisms that
enjoyed the support of the working class.  One of my complaints
against the world system theory is also that in some of its
practitioners' hands it resembles post-colonial takes on modernity,
progress, etc.  For instance, I don't like Wallerstein's _After
Liberalism_ (which interprets the Soviet modernization as nothing but
a variant of liberalism -- therefore he concludes that the collapse
of the USSR was a sign of the demise of liberalism!).

Yoshie