Re: criticising Arundhati Roy

[Yoshie Furuhashi <critical.montages@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 4/15/07, michael a. lebowitz <mlebowit@xxxxxx> wrote:
>          I don't quite understand the current
> criticisms of Arundhati Roy on this list---
> especially yours, Doug. What exactly is behind
> it? Jealousy? Gender? Culture? Politics? Especially the latter.
>          I found her recent interview an
> important validation of the struggle in India
> against neoliberalism--- especially in its phony
> left guises. See the excerpts below. Does that bother you folks?

One can criticize Roy for her own politics -- which I'd characterize
as opposition to capitalist developmentalism at all costs (especially
under the watch of parliamentary Marxists), with a certain level of
guarded sympathy for Maoism in India -- if one disagrees with it, but
that's not what's being done here.  All Doug, et al. have to say is
what she looks like, how she lives, and how she has been received in
the West.  All that's said about her politics is a gossip item that
quotes her US agent as saying she has no politics worth discussing.
(If that's what the agent is really saying on record, she really needs
a new agent!)

There's an odd insistence that if one expressed a sentiment of
solidarity with peasants whose lands were being unjustly taken away
for development, one must become a peasant growing "lentils" oneself.
That doesn't make sense to me.  Does it to anyone?  Solidarity can be
intra-class, but it can be inter-class.

At any time in any place, there are struggles going on among
intellectuals, of whom Roy is one by virtue of being a writer.
Whether or not there are enough intellectuals willing to ally with
peasants and workers below their level of wealth, income, and
education is crucial to determine whether they can effectively resist
capitalism and even overcome it and build a new society.  As Ravi
never stops emphasizing, in India as well as many countries, there are
many who are successful on capitalist terms and have nothing but
contempt for those who are poorer than them.  If Roy criticizes them,
even if she is as well off or better off than those whom she
criticizes, isn't her criticism still true?
--
Yoshie