On toilets wasRe: The Soviet Toilet & Nostalgia (was Re:Post-Colonialism & "Modernizing the Un-modern")

[Gary Maclennan <g.maclennan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 22:28 21/09/00 -0400, you wrote:
>Jim Farmelant forwards:
>
>>On Thu, 21 Sep 2000 19:28:48 -0400 Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx> writes:
>> > >I'm critical of the genre of criticism called post-colonialism.  For
>> > >
>> > >Yoshie
>> >
>> > Speaking of post-colonialism, this showed up on Doug Henwood's list.
>> > I suppose it is a sign of the times that somebody confessed that he
>> > couldn't tell if it was a joke or not. The Spoons Collective, by the
>> way, is
>> > the outfit that used to run the original Marxism list. You can figure
>> > out how much of a living hell that was from the post. My guess is they
>> took
>> > it seriously for sure.
>>
>>BTW here is what Doug has to say about this:
><snip>
>
>Jim, you are not supposed to encourage Lou like this. :)


Yes Lou is being encouraged somewhat by the culturalists.  I too was not
sure that the toilet thing was not a hoax.  On balance I decided that it
was dead serious.  For all their talk of parody and pastiche etc
postmodernists take themselves with a deathly and deadening seriousness. so
I can see a whole issue/conference on the toilet.

My own thoughts here are that I would approach this matter from a
Bakhtinian perspective.  Dear old Bakhtin was badly bowdlerized by his
American and European disciples.  However his was definitely a celebration
of the  historical role 'lower bodily (male!) strata' - dicks and ass holes
to the masses.

There is a very good Australian  documentary by Robyn Anderson and Bob
Connolly - First Contact.  It tells the story of the arrival of three Irish
Australian adventurers in the Highlands of Papua New guinea in the
1930s.  Like Stanley in the Congo, the Leahy Brother carved a bloody path
through the highlands murdering and exploiting and robbing the masses.  the
indigenous people at first thought the Leahys were Gods or their dead
returned.  they learned soon to their cost the true nature of the white
colonists.

In the film an old man talks of the experience of being a boy and seeing
the Leahys.  One of the brothers went into the bush to have a shit.  the
locals gathered round to see what he had done.  the verdict was 'their skin
may be different but their shit smells just like ours'.

that for me is the precious radical moment within the film.  It is also a
reminder that people of power are fundamentally no better than the rest of us.

I doubt though that this levelling down was what the pomos had in mind.

regards

Gary