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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JohnM who wrote (38360)	8/17/2002 8:20:10 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Your position and that of Lindy's makes sense only if you accept the notion that something called "cultures" are wholistic entities and have to be judged as such. As I read it, Pomo, multiculturism, and Post Colonialism insist on looking at cultures as a whole. The big push is to keep people classified in their cultures, and treat them as members of it. Racism today in our culture, for instance, is being pushed and prolonged by people who want to keep these definitions. A good example is the rally this weekend to get "reparations" for blacks because some of their ancestors were slaves. Hell, everybody has ancestors who were slaves! When you deal with people on an Individual basis, as I and Nadine are proposing, the whole "culture" problem goes away.

To: JohnM who wrote (38360)	8/17/2002 11:51:27 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Most real life, everyday cultures are fragments of new things, traditional things, in conflict with one another, etc Yes, well obviously cultures are dynamic, cross-polinating entities, as the all the smarter multiculturalists admit. (As kumar says, Indian culture has modernized considerably, partly due no doubt to British influence) However, the habits of thought promulgated by multiculturalism, which make a big deal about "respecting different cultures" and "preserving" them from globalization, Americanisation, modernization, whatever you call it, imply the existence of culture a more fixed entity -- if it's a flux, what exactly are you trying to "preserve"? These habits of thought are particularly applied to the history of colonialism, where one culture goes halfway around the globe and imposes its laws on another culture by dint of superior force, about as clearcut a case of a sudden juxtaposition of separate cultural contexts as you are likely to find anywhere. That's why I used the British in India as an example. If as one portion of these disparate things we label with that awkward term "culture," the males in that culture abuse women, I don't have any problem considering it wrong, arguing that power is a frequent creator of the justifications for abuse in social settings... I still ask, how can suttee be "wrong", if it is "right" and even "holy" within a cultural context that values family honor and religious self-sacrifice above the (alien, Western) values of human right to life? Surely outlawing suttee was imposing a Western standard on an Eastern culture that valued differently? If you do not believe in judging the values of other cultures "primitive" or "backwards", as the 19th cen. British had no trouble doing, on what grounds can you consider suttee wrong? This is why I say that the 'strong' form of multiculturalism, the form that says right and wrong can only be judged inside a cultural context, and no culture must be judged inferior to another culture, is inherently self-contradictory. It can only be followed by one who believes in nothing at all, and everyone, including multiculturalists, must follow some values. Tolerance and respect for cultural achievement are themselves values, but the strong form of multiculturalism is a kind of reductio ad absurdum of these values. But the more usual practice of multiculturalism is what I call the 'weak' form, which preaches tolerance of all cultures and judgement of none. This form fills anthologies with stories from Africa and Asia which the reader does not have the background to comprehend, and suppresses any discussion of the reader's impression that these stories, while interesting of their kind, are surely much more primitive and less subtle than Shakespeare or Joyce? However, when push comes to shove and a member of another culture really crosses a 'red line' of our own culture, e.g. if an Arab immigrant commits an honor killing of a female relative, the weak multiculturalist has no problem at all declaring that such behavior is wrong and inexcusable, even though it may be right and even required within another cultural context. This is why I call the weak form of multiculturalism an affectation. So the weak form of multiculturalism is an affectation, and the strong form is internally self-contradictory. -g- -ng- I'm not much of a multiculturalist, as you see.