Re: Anti-Eurocentrism: Idealist Diversion from Anti-racism/anti-imperialism

[Jim Devine <jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 09:34 AM 4/12/00 -0500, you wrote:
> The trick is to reverse cause and effect, and by attacking the effects
> (which exist purely in the superstructure of rarified scholastic dispute)
> we can soothe feelings wounded by our inability to oppose effectively the
> victories of racism and imperialism of the last few decades.

It's not just a matter of the failure of a movement as much as its
transformation in some cases: the idea of anti-Eurocentrism seems to go
along with bureaucratic "solutions" to racism, as with
administration-imposed "speech codes" which restrict the speech of students
and faculty at some colleges. (Frankly, I don't know where these codes has
actually taken hold. My impression is that most of such efforts failed to
be accepted or survive. As we discussed a few weeks ago, at a place like
Antioch College, speech codes can come from below.) Of course, this kind of
transformation into a bureaucratic strategy indicates a kind of failure
(though not necessarily for the careers of the administrators).

Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxx &  http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine