Can non-Europeans think? - The Something Awful Forums

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Can non-Europeans think?

Fire: Aug 26, 2002; As for myself I am a 28 year old special ed teacher from Jacksonville. Ironically, I myself also have asperger's syndrome. I'm a gamer, both video games and also tabletop role-playing games. I have an interest in science fiction, fantasy, and horror.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/op...2638797542.html

quote:

In a lovely little panegyric for the distinguished European philosopher Slavoj Zizek, published recently on Al Jazeera, we read:

There are many important and active philosophers today: Judith Butler in the United States, Simon Critchley in England, Victoria Camps in Spain, Jean-Luc Nancy in France, Chantal Mouffe in Belgium, Gianni Vattimo in Italy, Peter Sloterdijk in Germany and in Slovenia, Slavoj Zizek, not to mention others working in Brazil, Australia and China.

What immediately strikes the reader when seeing this opening paragraph is the unabashedly European character and disposition of the thing the author calls "philosophy today" - thus laying a claim on both the subject and time that is peculiar and in fact an exclusive property of Europe.

Even Judith Butler who is cited as an example from the United States is decidedly a product of European philosophical genealogy, thinking somewhere between Derrida and Foucault, brought to bear on our understanding of gender and sexuality.

To be sure, China and Brazil (and Australia, which is also a European extension) are cited as the location of other philosophers worthy of the designation, but none of them evidently merits a specific name to be sitting next to these eminent European philosophers.

The question of course is not the globality of philosophical visions that all these prominent European (and by extension certain American) philosophers indeed share and from which people from the deepest corners of Africa to the remotest villages of India, China, Latin America, and the Arab and Muslim world ("deep and far", that is, from a fictive European centre) can indeed learn and better understand their lives.

That goes without saying, for without that confidence and self-consciousness these philosophers and the philosophical traditions they represent can scarce lay any universal claim on our epistemic credulities, nor would they be able to put pen to paper or finger to keyboard and write a sentence.

Thinkers outside Europe

These are indeed not only eminent philosophers, but the philosophy they practice has the globality of certain degrees of self-conscious confidence without which no thinking can presume universality.

The question is rather something else: What about other thinkers who operate outside this European philosophical pedigree, whether they practice their thinking in the European languages they have colonially inherited or else in their own mother tongues - in Asia, in Africa, in Latin America, thinkers that have actually earned the dignity of a name, and perhaps even the pedigree of a "public intellectual" not too dissimilar to Hannah Arendt, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Michel Foucault that in this piece on Al Jazeera are offered as predecessors of Zizek?

"Why is European philosophy 'philosophy', but African philosophy 'ethnophilosophy'?"

What about thinkers outside the purview of these European philosophers; how are we to name and designate and honour and learn from them with the epithet of "public intellectual" in the age of globalised media?

Do the constellation of thinkers from South Asia, exemplified by leading figures like Ashis Nandy, Partha Chatterjee, Gayatri Spivak, Ranajit Guha, Sudipta Kaviraj, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Homi Bhabha, or Akeel Bilgrami, come together to form a nucleus of thinking that is conscious of itself? Would that constellation perhaps merit the word "thinking" in a manner that would qualify one of them - as a South Asian - to the term "philosopher" or "public intellectuals"?

Are they "South Asian thinkers" or "thinkers", the way these European thinkers are? Why is it that if Mozart sneezes it is "music" (and I am quite sure the great genius even sneezed melodiously) but the most sophisticated Indian music ragas are the subject of "ethnomusicology"?

Is that "ethnos" not also applicable to the philosophical thinking that Indian philosophers practice - so much so that their thinking is more the subject of Western European and North American anthropological fieldwork and investigation?

We can turn around and look at Africa. What about thinkers like Henry Odera Oruka, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe, Okot p'Bitek, Taban Lo Liyong, Achille Mbembe, Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze, Souleymane Bachir Diagne, V.Y. Mudimbe: Would they qualify for the term "philosopher" or "public intellectuals" perhaps, or is that also "ethnophilosophy"?

Why is European philosophy "philosophy", but African philosophy ethnophilosophy, the way Indian music is ethnomusic - an ethnographic logic that is based on the very same reasoning that if you were to go to the New York Museum of Natural History (popularised in Shawn Levy's Night at the Museum [2006]), you only see animals and non-white peoples and their cultures featured inside glass cages, but no cage is in sight for white people and their cultures - they just get to stroll through the isles and enjoy the power and ability of looking at taxidermic Yaks, cave dwellers, elephants, Eskimos, buffalo, Native Americans, etc, all in a single winding row.

The same ethnographic gaze is evident in the encounter with the intellectual disposition of the Arab or Muslim world: Azmi Bishara, Sadeq Jalal Al-Azm, Fawwaz Traboulsi, Abdallah Laroui, Michel Kilo, Abdolkarim Soroush. The list of prominent thinkers and is endless.

In Japan, Kojin Karatani, in Cuba, Roberto Fernandez Retamar, or even in the United States people like Cornel West, whose thinking is not entirely in the European continental tradition - what about them? Where do they fit in? Can they think - is what they do also thinking, philosophical, pertinent, perhaps, or is that also suitable for ethnographic examinations?

The question of Eurocentricism is now entirely blase. Of course Europeans are Eurocentric and see the world from their vantage point, and why should they not? They are the inheritors of multiple (now defunct) empires and they still carry within them the phantom hubris of those empires and they think their particular philosophy is "philosophy" and their particular thinking is "thinking", and everything else is - as the great European philosopher Immanuel Levinas was wont of saying - "dancing".

The question is rather the manner in which non-European thinking can reach self-consciousness and evident universality, not at the cost of whatever European philosophers may think of themselves for the world at large, but for the purpose of offering alternative (complementary or contradictory) visions of reality more rooted in the lived experiences of people in Africa, in Asia, in Latin America - counties and climes once under the spell of the thing that calls itself "the West" but happily no more.

The trajectory of contemporary thinking around the globe is not spontaneously conditioned in our own immediate time and disparate locations, but has a much deeper and wider spectrum that goes back to earlier generations of thinkers ranging from José Marti to Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, to Aime Cesaire, W.E.B. DuBois, Liang Qichao, Frantz Fanon, Rabindranath Tagore, Mahatma Gandhi, etc.

So the question remains why not the dignity of "philosophy" and whence the anthropological curiosity of "ethnophilosophy"?

Let's seek the answer from Europe itself - but from the subaltern of Europe.

'The Intellectuals as a Cosmopolitan Stratum'

In his Prison Notebooks, Antonio Gramsci has a short discussion about Kant's famous phrase in Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785) that is quite critical in our understanding of what it takes for a philosopher to become universally self-conscious, to think of himself as the measure and yardstick of globality. Gramsci's stipulation is critical here - and here is how he begins:

Kant's maxim "act in such a way that your conduct can become a norm for all men in similar conditions" is less simple and obvious than it appears at first sight. What is meant by 'similar conditions'?

To be sure, and as Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (the editors and translators of the English translation of Gramsci's Prison Notebooks) note, Gramsci here in fact misquotes Kant, and that "similar conditions" does not appear in the original text, where the German philosopher says: "I am never to act otherwise than so that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law." This principle, called "the categorical imperative", is in fact the very foundation of Kantian ethics.

So where Kant says "universal law", Gramsci says, "a norm for all men", and then he adds an additional "similar conditions", which is not in the German original.

"The world at large, and the Arab and Muslim world in particular, is going through world historic changes - these changes have produced thinkers, poets, artists, and public intellectuals at the centre of their moral and politcial imagination."

That misquoting is quite critical here. Gramsci's conclusion is that the reason Kant can say what he says and offer his own behaviour as measure of universal ethics is that "Kant's maxim presupposes a single culture, a single religion, a 'world-wide' conformism... Kant's maxim is connected with his time, with the cosmopolitan enlightenment and the critical conception of the author. In brief, it is linked to the philosophy of the intellectuals as a cosmopolitan stratum".

What in effect Gramsci discovers, as a southern Italian suffering in the dungeons of European fascism, is what in Brooklyn we call chutzpah, to think yourself the centre of universe, a self-assuredness that gives the philosopher that certain panache and authority to think in absolutists and grand narrative terms.

Therefore the agent is the bearer of the "similar conditions" and indeed their creator. That is, he "must" act according to a "model" which he would like to see diffused among all mankind, according to a type of civilisation for whose coming he is working-or for whose preservation he is "resisting" the forces that threaten its disintegration.

It is precisely that self-confidence, that self-consciousness, that audacity to think yourself the agent of history that enables a thinker to think his particular thinking is "Thinking" in universal terms, and his philosophy "Philosophy" and his city square "The Public Space", and thus he a globally recognised Public Intellectual.

There is thus a direct and unmitigated structural link between an empire, or an imperial frame of reference, and the presumed universality of a thinker thinking in the bosoms of that empire.

As all other people, Europeans are perfectly entitled to their own self-centrism.

The imperial hubris that once enabled that Eurocentricism and still produces the infomercials of the sort we read in Al Jazeera for Zizek are the phantom memories of the time that "the West" had assured confidence and a sense of its own universalism and globality, or as Gramsci put it, "to a type of civilisation for whose coming he is working".

But that globality is no more - people from every clime and continent are up and about claiming their own cosmopolitan worldliness and with it their innate ability to think beyond the confinements of that Eurocentricism, which to be sure is still entitled to its phantom pleasures of thinking itself the centre of the universe. The Gramscian superimposed "similar conditions" are now emerging in multiple cites of the liberated humanity.

The world at large, and the Arab and Muslim world in particular, is going through world historic changes - these changes have produced thinkers, poets, artists, and public intellectuals at the centre of their moral and politcial imagination - all thinking and acting in terms at once domestic to their immediate geography and yet global in its consequences.

Compared to those liberating tsunamis now turning the world upside down, cliche-ridden assumption about Europe and its increasingly provincialised philosophical pedigree is a tempest in the cup. Reduced to its own fair share of the humanity at large, and like all other continents and climes, Europe has much to teach the world, but now on a far more leveled and democratic playing field, where its philosophy is European philosophy not "Philosophy", its music European music not "Music", and no infomercial would be necessary to sell its public intellectuals as "Public Intellectuals".

Hamid Dabashi is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York. Among his most recent books is The World of Persian Literary Humanism (2012).

Its a good point. I can't even count on one finger the number of non-europeans that have been included in discussions of philosophy. I wasn't a philosophy major but even in other fields of liberal arts, non-europeans are sorely lacking, the impression a student gets is they pretty much don't exist. I would imagine this has an effect on students of color, where they are shown a culture where it is only white people, and mostly white men who have agency, who have thoughts or opinions worth studying.

# ? Jan 22, 2013 19:41

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# ? May 19, 2013 23:02

JT Jag: Aug 30, 2009; I say, old bean.

K-Pop is called K-Pop for a very good reason, and that is so I can stay as far away from it as I possibly can, as opposed to only staying at arm's length from conventional Pop music.

# ? Jan 22, 2013 19:53

SedanChair: Jun 1, 2003; Farrakhan/Alex Jones 2016

This is your best thread title yet. All the more so because it's straight from the article.

Although a better question might be "Can Judith Butler think?"

# ? Jan 22, 2013 19:57

d3c0y2: Sep 29, 2009

That is such a ridiculously inflammatory title for what wasn't actually an awful article.

# ? Jan 22, 2013 20:52

Paper Mac: Mar 2, 2007; lives in a paper shack

d3c0y2 posted:

That is such a ridiculously inflammatory title for what wasn't actually an awful article.

I think it's a play on the title of Spivak's "Can the Subaltern Speak?" essay.

# ? Jan 23, 2013 01:14

SBJ: Apr 10, 2009

Maybe while Europeans are still clinging onto philosophy as a medium in itself, Americans are putting philosophy in their fiction novels, movies and music to make it more accessible.

# ? Jan 23, 2013 04:53

EasternBronze: Jul 19, 2011

Isn't it basically a tautology that people view things from their own viewpoint?

# ? Jan 23, 2013 05:02

Reason: Sep 10, 2006

SBJ posted:

Maybe while Europeans are still clinging onto philosophy as a medium in itself, Americans are putting philosophy in their fiction novels, movies and music to make it more accessible.

This is interesting. But wouldn't you then risk the message being lost in the noise of consumerism? Certainly I've seen a few movies where I come out with my brain gears turning, but for the most part movies don't really seem to do that. The same with music, there is some music out there that has 'ideas' but for the most part its trash. My nose has been buried in too many polisci books to notice whether fiction recently, in the USA, has some sort of message, but putting your thoughts into a work of fiction has gone back a short ways at least, Johnathan Swift in Gulliver's Travels comes to mind.

# ? Jan 23, 2013 05:02

SedanChair: Jun 1, 2003; Farrakhan/Alex Jones 2016

SBJ posted:

Maybe while Europeans are still clinging onto philosophy as a medium in itself, Americans are putting philosophy in their fiction novels, movies and music to make it more accessible.

Yes, excellent. America is basically Futurism with the added refinement of massive fake tits, Tapatio Doritos, Four Loko and AR-15s.

Marinetti, after like a teener of coke posted:

We have been up all night, my friends and I, beneath mosque lamps whose brass cupolas are bright as our souls, because like them they were illuminated by the internal glow of electric hearts. And trampling underfoot our native sloth on opulent Persian carpets, we have been discussing right up to the limits of logic and scrawling the paper with demented writing.
Our hearts were filled with an immense pride at feeling ourselves standing quite alone, like lighthouses or like the sentinels in an outpost, facing the army of enemy stars encamped in their celestial bivouacs. Alone with the engineers in the infernal stokeholes of great ships, alone with the black spirits which rage in the belly of rogue locomotives, alone with the drunkards beating their wings against the walls.

Then we were suddenly distracted by the rumbling of huge double decker trams that went leaping by, streaked with light like the villages celebrating their festivals, which the Po in flood suddenly knocks down and uproots, and, in the rapids and eddies of a deluge, drags down to the sea.

Then the silence increased. As we listened to the last faint prayer of the old canal and the crumbling of the bones of the moribund palaces with their green growth of beard, suddenly the hungry automobiles roared beneath our windows.

"Come, my friends!" I said. "Let us go! At last Mythology and the mystic cult of the ideal have been left behind. We are going to be present at the birth of the centaur and we shall soon see the first angels fly! We must break down the gates of life to test the bolts and the padlocks! Let us go! Here is they very first sunrise on earth! Nothing equals the splendor of its red sword which strikes for the first time in our millennial darkness."

We went up to the three snorting machines to caress their breasts. I lay along mine like a corpse on its bier, but I suddenly revived again beneath the steering wheel — a guillotine knife — which threatened my stomach. A great sweep of madness brought us sharply back to ourselves and drove us through the streets, steep and deep, like dried up torrents. Here and there unhappy lamps in the windows taught us to despise our mathematical eyes. "Smell," I exclaimed, "smell is good enough for wild beasts!"

And we hunted, like young lions, death with its black fur dappled with pale crosses, who ran before us in the vast violet sky, palpable and living.

And yet we had no ideal Mistress stretching her form up to the clouds, nor yet a cruel Queen to whom to offer our corpses twisted into the shape of Byzantine rings! No reason to die unless it is the desire to be rid of the too great weight of our courage!

We drove on, crushing beneath our burning wheels, like shirt-collars under the iron, the watch dogs on the steps of the houses.

Death, tamed, went in front of me at each corner offering me his hand nicely, and sometimes lay on the ground with a noise of creaking jaws giving me velvet glances from the bottom of puddles.

"Let us leave good sense behind like a hideous husk and let us hurl ourselves, like fruit spiced with pride, into the immense mouth and breast of the world! Let us feed the unknown, not from despair, but simply to enrich the unfathomable reservoirs of the Absurd!"

As soon as I had said these words, I turned sharply back on my tracks with the mad intoxication of puppies biting their tails, and suddenly there were two cyclists disapproving of me and tottering in front of me like two persuasive but contradictory reasons. Their stupid swaying got in my way. What a bore! Pouah! I stopped short, and in disgust hurled myself — vlan! — head over heels in a ditch.

Oh, maternal ditch, half full of muddy water! A factory gutter! I savored a mouthful of strengthening muck which recalled the black teat of my Sudanese nurse!

As I raised my body, mud-spattered and smelly, I felt the red hot poker of joy deliciously pierce my heart. A crowd of fishermen and gouty naturalists crowded terrified around this marvel. With patient and tentative care they raised high enormous grappling irons to fish up my car, like a vast shark that had run aground. It rose slowly leaving in the ditch, like scales, its heavy coachwork of good sense and its upholstery of comfort.

We thought it was dead, my good shark, but I woke it with a single caress of its powerful back, and it was revived running as fast as it could on its fins.

Then with my face covered in good factory mud, covered with metal scratches, useless sweat and celestial grime, amidst the complaint of staid fishermen and angry naturalists, we dictated our first will and testament to all the living men on earth.

MANIFESTO OF FUTURISM

We want to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and rashness.
The essential elements of our poetry will be courage, audacity and revolt.
Literature has up to now magnified pensive immobility, ecstasy and slumber. We want to exalt movements of aggression, feverish sleeplessness, the double march, the perilous leap, the slap and the blow with the fist.
We declare that the splendor of the world has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing automobile with its bonnet adorned with great tubes like serpents with explosive breath ... a roaring motor car which seems to run on machine-gun fire, is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace.
We want to sing the man at the wheel, the ideal axis of which crosses the earth, itself hurled along its orbit.
The poet must spend himself with warmth, glamour and prodigality to increase the enthusiastic fervor of the primordial elements.
Beauty exists only in struggle. There is no masterpiece that has not an aggressive character. Poetry must be a violent assault on the forces of the unknown, to force them to bow before man.
We are on the extreme promontory of the centuries! What is the use of looking behind at the moment when we must open the mysterious shutters of the impossible? Time and Space died yesterday. We are already living in the absolute, since we have already created eternal, omnipresent speed.
We want to glorify war — the only cure for the world — militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of the anarchists, the beautiful ideas which kill, and contempt for woman.
We want to demolish museums and libraries, fight morality, feminism and all opportunist and utilitarian cowardice.
We will sing of the great crowds agitated by work, pleasure and revolt; the multi-colored and polyphonic surf of revolutions in modern capitals: the nocturnal vibration of the arsenals and the workshops beneath their violent electric moons: the gluttonous railway stations devouring smoking serpents; factories suspended from the clouds by the thread of their smoke; bridges with the leap of gymnasts flung across the diabolic cutlery of sunny rivers: adventurous steamers sniffing the horizon; great-breasted locomotives, puffing on the rails like enormous steel horses with long tubes for bridle, and the gliding flight of aeroplanes whose propeller sounds like the flapping of a flag and the applause of enthusiastic crowds.
It is in Italy that we are issuing this manifesto of ruinous and incendiary violence, by which we today are founding Futurism, because we want to deliver Italy from its gangrene of professors, archaeologists, tourist guides and antiquaries.

Italy has been too long the great second-hand market. We want to get rid of the innumerable museums which cover it with innumerable cemeteries.

Museums, cemeteries! Truly identical in their sinister juxtaposition of bodies that do not know each other. Public dormitories where you sleep side by side for ever with beings you hate or do not know. Reciprocal ferocity of the painters and sculptors who murder each other in the same museum with blows of line and color. To make a visit once a year, as one goes to see the graves of our dead once a year, that we could allow! We can even imagine placing flowers once a year at the feet of the Gioconda! But to take our sadness, our fragile courage and our anxiety to the museum every day, that we cannot admit! Do you want to poison yourselves? Do you want to rot?

What can you find in an old picture except the painful contortions of the artist trying to break uncrossable barriers which obstruct the full expression of his dream?

To admire an old picture is to pour our sensibility into a funeral urn instead of casting it forward with violent spurts of creation and action. Do you want to waste the best part of your strength in a useless admiration of the past, from which you will emerge exhausted, diminished, trampled on?

Indeed daily visits to museums, libraries and academies (those cemeteries of wasted effort, calvaries of crucified dreams, registers of false starts!) is for artists what prolonged supervision by the parents is for intelligent young men, drunk with their own talent and ambition.

For the dying, for invalids and for prisoners it may be all right. It is, perhaps, some sort of balm for their wounds, the admirable past, at a moment when the future is denied them. But we will have none of it, we, the young, strong and living Futurists!

Let the good incendiaries with charred fingers come! Here they are! Heap up the fire to the shelves of the libraries! Divert the canals to flood the cellars of the museums! Let the glorious canvases swim ashore! Take the picks and hammers! Undermine the foundation of venerable towns!

The oldest among us are not yet thirty years old: we have therefore at least ten years to accomplish our task. When we are forty let younger and stronger men than we throw us in the waste paper basket like useless manuscripts! They will come against us from afar, leaping on the light cadence of their first poems, clutching the air with their predatory fingers and sniffing at the gates of the academies the good scent of our decaying spirits, already promised to the catacombs of the libraries.

But we shall not be there. They will find us at last one winter's night in the depths of the country in a sad hangar echoing with the notes of the monotonous rain, crouched near our trembling aeroplanes, warming our hands at the wretched fire which our books of today will make when they flame gaily beneath the glittering flight of their pictures.

They will crowd around us, panting with anguish and disappointment, and exasperated by our proud indefatigable courage, will hurl themselves forward to kill us, with all the more hatred as their hearts will be drunk with love and admiration for us. And strong healthy Injustice will shine radiantly from their eyes. For art can only be violence, cruelty, injustice.

The oldest among us are not yet thirty, and yet we have already wasted treasures, treasures of strength, love, courage and keen will, hastily, deliriously, without thinking, with all our might, till we are out of breath.

Look at us! We are not out of breath, our hearts are not in the least tired. For they are nourished by fire, hatred and speed! Does this surprise you? it is because you do not even remember being alive! Standing on the world's summit, we launch once more our challenge to the stars!

Your objections? All right! I know them! Of course! We know just what our beautiful false intelligence affirms: "We are only the sum and the prolongation of our ancestors," it says. Perhaps! All right! What does it matter? But we will not listen! Take care not to repeat those infamous words! Instead, lift up your head!

Standing on the world's summit we launch once again our insolent challenge to the stars!

SedanChair fucked around with this message at Jan 23, 2013 around 08:41

# ? Jan 23, 2013 05:19

gnarlyhotep: Sep 30, 2008; I'd like to reserve the volleyball court

Nah, not really. We're not European.

# ? Jan 23, 2013 05:55

Ghost of Reagan Past: Oct 7, 2003; Advice from above

As a PhD student in philosophy (I'll leave aside my extensive misgivings at characterizing European philosophy as being exemplified by the names mentioned since its irrelevant...Judoth Butler is most assuredly not the most important philosopher in the US today...she's a pretty marginal figure), we've been slow to acknowledge our horrible ethnocentrism (and sexism). I think there is some unjustified hostility towards universalist principles and ideas in the article, but the idea seems fine, if a bit trivial. We all have a perspective on things, therefore...? I think we should try to expand our horizons beyond our own traditions, and I actively try to do at least some reading on diverse sources, but I can't imagine he wants me to become familiar with all sorts of philosophy from everywhere. It can't be a base terminological issue; I'm willing to call what I do 'European philosophy' if it makes him happy. There are lots of rich philosophical traditions out there that we in the West aren't familiar enough with, but the idea that the mere existence of this should undermine claims to universality or the practice of Western philosophy is confused.

# ? Jan 23, 2013 06:01

LeftistMuslimObama: Jan 6, 2012

Yeah, I'm not sure that you can really tie philosophy to any one group like that. Ultimately, philosophy is still merely the pursuit of knowledge of the unquantifiable. What is the truth of things that are not empirically provable. That philosophers from different parts of the globe have taken different lines of reasoning on those questions over the years doesn't imply that those who followed one of the several European lines of thought think of other groups as "not philosophers." It's merely that the discussion between the groups hasn't happened yet. This is possibly because western philosophy likes to keep to the academic setting these days, and philosophy doesn't seem to be a thing that happens in universities in the east or in Africa. Perhaps there's some exploration to be done to help academic philosophers interface with the philosophical traditions that have arisen in a non-university setting.

# ? Jan 23, 2013 06:15

SBJ: Apr 10, 2009

Reason posted:

This is interesting. But wouldn't you then risk the message being lost in the noise of consumerism? Certainly I've seen a few movies where I come out with my brain gears turning, but for the most part movies don't really seem to do that. The same with music, there is some music out there that has 'ideas' but for the most part its trash. My nose has been buried in too many polisci books to notice whether fiction recently, in the USA, has some sort of message, but putting your thoughts into a work of fiction has gone back a short ways at least, Johnathan Swift in Gulliver's Travels comes to mind.

Yeah, you do risk that, quite often too. Especially because when money comes into it, it's hard to tell which ideas are genuine, and which ones are put forward simply to make more money. But there are some people who release their works without the influence of money factoring in, despite the majority of media being complete poo poo. Time usually filters these out though, the only things that will get remembered fondly in the future are more often than not, the ones that were influential to a lot of people, not the ones that made the most profit.

SedanChair posted:

Yes, excellent. America is basically Futurism with the added refinement of massive fake tits, Tapatio Doritos, Four Loko and AR-15s.

Well I'm not suggesting that every work of fiction qualifies as a philosophical message, but I was just suggesting that in this day and age, to make a work of fiction that adopts and explores an idea seems pretty popular. Frankly, nobody outside of academia will read your long essay on your philosophical ideas or give a poo poo. I honestly think that the age of philosophers gaining a following is over and has been for a while. On the flip side of that coin, you have many figures who spout ideas that gain considerable following, either through their works of fiction or through their speeches/shows etc.

Hell, just look at Carl Sagan and Neil deGrasse Tyson, they aren't philosophers and don't necessarily have a "set philosophy" to follow but their ideas certainly survive and are propagated, with many people altering their lives/interests to follow their teachings. Many authors also have been taking this route, they don't say "this is what I believe, and this is why" but they come up with fictional scenarios that present their messages. E.g. would you consider Isaac Asimov to be a philosopher?

SBJ fucked around with this message at Jan 23, 2013 around 06:48

# ? Jan 23, 2013 06:28

Paper Mac: Mar 2, 2007; lives in a paper shack

Ghost of Reagan Past posted:

As a PhD student in philosophy (I'll leave aside my extensive misgivings at characterizing European philosophy as being exemplified by the names mentioned since its irrelevant...Judoth Butler is most assuredly not the most important philosopher in the US today...she's a pretty marginal figure), we've been slow to acknowledge our horrible ethnocentrism (and sexism). I think there is some unjustified hostility towards universalist principles and ideas in the article, but the idea seems fine, if a bit trivial. We all have a perspective on things, therefore...? I think we should try to expand our horizons beyond our own traditions, and I actively try to do at least some reading on diverse sources, but I can't imagine he wants me to become familiar with all sorts of philosophy from everywhere. It can't be a base terminological issue; I'm willing to call what I do 'European philosophy' if it makes him happy. There are lots of rich philosophical traditions out there that we in the West aren't familiar enough with, but the idea that the mere existence of this should undermine claims to universality or the practice of Western philosophy is confused.

I thought that it was mostly a response to an AJ report which failed to contextualise or relate Zizek to philosophers which its (global) audience might be more familiar with, though. Arguably a Chakrabarty has more to do with Zizek's thought than a Butler does anyway, no?

# ? Jan 23, 2013 07:22

duck monster: Dec 15, 2004; Never stop arguing about casual racism.

I'm not sure I can feel comfortable with claiming Spivak , for instance, writes in any particularly non occidental sort of voice. She writes about third world people, and she comes from said people, but she's framing it in essentially the language and mental framing of Deconstruction and Post structuralism, a somewhat continental mode of philosophy.

I mean sure the subject is third world and she develops many unique viewpoints despite her francophone philosophical bent, but for comparison Camus was an algerian who wrote about algeria, and he's assuredly right in there with the french, rather than third world, pantheon of philosophers. Actually heck, Derrida was Algerian too.
,
Wheres the line here?

# ? Jan 23, 2013 07:47

Jacobeus: Jan 9, 2013

I can only speak from my perspective as a lowly college student in the USA, but I feel as though philosophy as a subject in general experiences quite a lot of disdain or contempt from intellectuals of other subjects. Even at a major university such as mine, practicality and concreteness are held much higher over any forms of abstraction. Thus you have almost a hierarchy of intellectual pursuits. From what I gather, it seems to begin at the top with the engineering and hard sciences such as chemistry and biology. Then you have other hard sciences which tend to not immediately result in lucrative careers (Like Physics and Mathematics, my own fields). Next comes business, law, public policy, political science, etc., followed by 'soft sciences' and all the humanities, and philosophy, and then finally the fine arts at the very bottom. If we had a medical school that would probably be near the tippy-top. Do I believe these fields deserve their place in the hierarchy or in any hierarchy at all? Of course not. But that's just the perception these days.

American culture is heavily influenced by the idea of a prestigious career and success. Therefore our colleges and universities focus on glamorizing subjects perceived as leading to a higher social status. Since being a philosopher doesn't necessarily lead to that American ideal, it is not glamorized and is not considered as prestigious. This is, I believe, the reason why you don't hear much about American philosophers, despite the fact that they do exist, and may have produced some pretty original and fascinating ideas. Now of course I'm only basing this on what I've observed, but my university, being quite large and public, I think serves as a pretty good sample for academia at large.

# ? Jan 23, 2013 08:19

Kieselguhr Kid: May 16, 2010; WHY USE ONE WORD WHEN SIX FUCKING PARAGRAPHS WILL DO?

(If this post doesn't have at least one italicised French word please report it.)

Paper Mac posted:

I thought that it was mostly a response to an AJ report which failed to contextualise or relate Zizek to philosophers which its (global) audience might be more familiar with, though. Arguably a Chakrabarty has more to do with Zizek's thought than a Butler does anyway, no?

Zizek is personal friends with Butler, and loves to hate her and vice versa (he calls her a "personal friend, theoretical enemy"). She shares his Hegel/Althusser/Lacan triad but plays way too much of this linguistic philosophy, deconstruction, etc. stuff for his taste. They regularly respond to one another's work.

duck monster posted:

I'm not sure I can feel comfortable with claiming Spivak , for instance, writes in any particularly non occidental sort of voice. She writes about third world people, and she comes from said people, but she's framing it in essentially the language and mental framing of Deconstruction and Post structuralism, a somewhat continental mode of philosophy.

Not only do I totally agree with this, I often feel the very things postcolonial thinkers usually claim to oppose -- essentialism, totalisation, etc. -- are undermined by the very social position they claim for themselves. You don't need dismiss the significance of the issues or the esteem of many of the thinkers to make the point that postcolonial theory is a mainstay in the western academy and well within the western intellectual tradition.

There's something fundamentally fake about posturing over authenticity.

# ? Jan 23, 2013 10:02

MaterialConceptual: Jan 18, 2011; "It is rather that precisely in that which is newest the face of the world never alters, that this newest remains, in every aspect, the same. - This constitutes the eternity of hell."

-Walter Benjamin, "The Arcades Project"

Studying at a top university in Japan, I think I can say that the Japanese academy is still massively Eurocentric. Trying to even conceive of what a non-Eurocentric philosophy would mean is incredibly difficult because Europe and America basically defined what it means to be modern (Largely through the extension of capitalism), to speak in a modern manner (through the construction of national languages), and to think in a modern manner as well (The entire category of thought called philosophy is a European construction). At the apex of Japanese imperialism the Kyoto School tried to think through what a "post-European" way of thinking would imply but the material basis for that worldview was utterly destroyed along with the Japanese Empire. There have been some limited attempts to resurrect the Kyoto School here, but it really is thinking from a different age. I think Eurocentrism will continue to slowly erode but the point where we can talk about truly "post-European" thought is a long long way off.

# ? Jan 23, 2013 12:35

Elias_Maluco: Aug 23, 2007; I need to sleep

I think is funny how the article puts Australia as an "European extension" and Brazil as something different. Except for the being poor, Brazil is as much an "europeanm extension" as Australia is.

And the academy here is still mostly very eurocentric.

# ? Jan 23, 2013 12:41

the jizz taxi: Nov 9, 2008; you called?

The whole concept of philosophy as we know it is Eurocentric. Hell, you only need to look at the endless pages that people in the West devote to whether to catalogue Buddhism as a religion, a philosophy, both or neither, that it becomes apparent that our very definition of philosophy makes it Eurocentric to the core. If people with philosophical ideas from non-Western(ised) countries break through onto the world stage, they're always labeled as 'gurus' or 'spiritual leaders'.

# ? Jan 23, 2013 13:22

Dolash: Oct 23, 2008; Pickle: Inspected.

This isn't really surprising, but nor is it really especially outrageous. Just because the western world has an academic tradition of philosophy that's named Philosophy doesn't mean that said school is the objective umbrella that covers all human philosophical thought. That said school can even include as much of the world as it does, considering cultural boundaries, is impressive.

Philosophy shares this challenge with Science, which is the desire to be all-encompassing of the objective study of its field but is limited by our history apart from one another and our barriers of language and culture. Overcoming these barriers to discover new lines of thought and study are worthwhile goals, and there are philosophers and other thinkers in the western tradition trying to do this, but there's no point in heaping scorn on a philosopher who's only versed in their own school any more than there is of scorning a historian for being specialized in their own country's history. That might be the better comparison, in fact - what we call philosophy is really more like the history of philosophical thought in the places the tradition encompasses, and just like history there are missing accounts and other traditions still to incorporate.

# ? Jan 23, 2013 13:30

MaterialConceptual: Jan 18, 2011; "It is rather that precisely in that which is newest the face of the world never alters, that this newest remains, in every aspect, the same. - This constitutes the eternity of hell."

-Walter Benjamin, "The Arcades Project"

the jizz taxi posted:

If people with philosophical ideas from non-Western(ised) countries break through onto the world stage, they're always labeled as 'gurus' or 'spiritual leaders'.

Unless they situate themselves clearly within the European tradition of thought (i.e. as "philosophers").

Dolash posted:

Just because the western world has an academic tradition of philosophy that's named Philosophy doesn't mean that said school is the objective umbrella that covers all human philosophical thought.

No, but the whole point is that it contains within itself the aspiration to cover all human philosophical thought. It is a universalizing project that posits all non-European "philosophical thought" as something to be subsumed within itself in the future. This is the contradiction of European universalism because it simultaneously represents an attempt to impose the European generality as universal (Implying the domination of "Europe" over the world), and the potential for that generality to actually become universal and therefore negate its particularism.

MaterialConceptual fucked around with this message at Jan 23, 2013 around 13:46

# ? Jan 23, 2013 13:33

agarjogger: May 16, 2011

The US crowdsources its thinking by letting all its opinion leaders make up their own insane, stunted abstraction of the truth and adding them all together to return to the mean. That doesn't work with philosophers so we don't have any. Maybe they're all otherwise employed, like as stadium custodians and abalone divers.

# ? Jan 23, 2013 17:48

Muscle Tracer: Feb 23, 2007

Reason posted:

This is interesting. But wouldn't you then risk the message being lost in the noise of consumerism?

A risk I'd prefer to risking the message being lost in "never being read by anyone outside of a graduate Philosophy program."

# ? Jan 23, 2013 17:52

BrandorKP: Jan 21, 2006

MaterialConceptual posted:

No, but the whole point is that it contains within itself the aspiration to cover all human philosophical thought. It is a universalizing project that posits all non-European "philosophical thought" as something to be subsumed within itself in the future. This is the contradiction of European universalism because it simultaneously represents an attempt to impose the European generality as universal (Implying the domination of "Europe" over the world), and the potential for that generality to actually become universal and therefore negate its particularism.

There is also an important western religion that claims to have a particular person that was also the unconditioned universal and that claims to subsume everything that is via a specific event in the past. Which is to say that if one is going to talk about Hegelians, it shouldn't be forgotten that Hegel was a German Lutheran talking about the God on the cross. And that the contradictory universalizing project is an attempt to replace a paradoxical religious revelatory claim.

# ? Jan 23, 2013 18:25

1337JiveTurkey: Feb 17, 2005; Baby, I'm hot, just like your oven...

Jacobeus posted:

I can only speak from my perspective as a lowly college student in the USA, but I feel as though philosophy as a subject in general experiences quite a lot of disdain or contempt from intellectuals of other subjects. Even at a major university such as mine, practicality and concreteness are held much higher over any forms of abstraction. Thus you have almost a hierarchy of intellectual pursuits. From what I gather, it seems to begin at the top with the engineering and hard sciences such as chemistry and biology. Then you have other hard sciences which tend to not immediately result in lucrative careers (Like Physics and Mathematics, my own fields). Next comes business, law, public policy, political science, etc., followed by 'soft sciences' and all the humanities, and philosophy, and then finally the fine arts at the very bottom. If we had a medical school that would probably be near the tippy-top. Do I believe these fields deserve their place in the hierarchy or in any hierarchy at all? Of course not. But that's just the perception these days.

That's certainly some part of it, but to the extent that people in the hard sciences adhere to a philosophy it's often incompatible with what the members of the philosophy department adhere to. Consider a question as basic as whether there is an objective reality that is independent of our senses or whether our social context affects our perception enough to make the concept of objective reality meaningless. Anyone in the sciences is going to lean hard towards the first option or option three: "Who cares? As long as it makes predictions consistent with what we see, it's useful." Anybody who doesn't—and this includes a great number of 20th and 21st century philosophers—is going to be working from premises that many of those in the sciences will fundamentally disagree with.

Mathematics in particular is pretty much abstraction taken to the logical extreme and then dragged a bit further just to keep things interesting. Things like the Weierstrass Function and the Cantor Function can't possibly exist and serve no purpose other than as a step towards even weirder functions and deeper mathematical structures. The fact that Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems are true and that they could even be proven formally in the first place offer a fascinating look at what it's even possible to know. It's in many ways the closest subject to philosophy in the first place, particularly the analytic school.

# ? Jan 23, 2013 18:57

coffeetable: Feb 5, 2006

1337JiveTurkey posted:

Mathematics in particular is pretty much abstraction taken to the logical extreme and then dragged a bit further just to keep things interesting. Things like the Weierstrass Function and the Cantor Function can't possibly exist

Oh my god. A real live finitist. Honey, get the camera, quick!

# ? Jan 23, 2013 19:23

1337JiveTurkey: Feb 17, 2005; Baby, I'm hot, just like your oven...

coffeetable posted:

Oh my god. A real live finitist. Honey, get the camera, quick!

In the physical world. Although even if non-calculable numbers exist, that doesn't mean I need to like them. <

# ? Jan 23, 2013 19:31

deptstoremook: Jan 12, 2004; my mom got scared and said "you're moving with your Aunt and Uncle in Bel-Air!"

duck monster posted:

I'm not sure I can feel comfortable with claiming Spivak , for instance, writes in any particularly non occidental sort of voice. She writes about third world people, and she comes from said people, but she's framing it in essentially the language and mental framing of Deconstruction and Post structuralism, a somewhat continental mode of philosophy.

I mean sure the subject is third world and she develops many unique viewpoints despite her francophone philosophical bent, but for comparison Camus was an algerian who wrote about algeria, and he's assuredly right in there with the french, rather than third world, pantheon of philosophers. Actually heck, Derrida was Algerian too.
,
Wheres the line here?

Well you're also running into some other questions, like "is Foucault a philosopher" or "is Fanon a philosopher," which neither of them are in the sense of Kant or Hegel, but they're more like philosophers than James Joyce or Watson and Crick. Is bell hooks a philosopher, and what's the difference between cultural theory and philosophy?

One big issue (not brought up in the Al Jazeera article) is that philosophy is all men, the post-Antiquity canon is all Western European (it's hilarious that Zizek is the best examples an educated layperson would likely be able to find of "diversity in philosophy"), and Judith Butler is kind of begrudgingly accepted on occasion--though not always, as you'll see scrolling up.

As long as this kind of "thinking" is the domain of a vanishingly small subset of all people, it will continue to be inconsequential except as a place to attack and critique its practitioners. I think Europe will continue to carry around those phantoms of empire for a long time.

Elias_Maluco posted:

I think is funny how the article puts Australia as an "European extension" and Brazil as something different. Except for the being poor, Brazil is as much an "europeanm extension" as Australia is.

Look how wrong you are.

# ? Jan 23, 2013 20:08

duck monster: Dec 15, 2004; Never stop arguing about casual racism.

Kieselguhr Kid posted:

Zizek is personal friends with Butler, and loves to hate her and vice versa (he calls her a "personal friend, theoretical enemy"). She shares his Hegel/Althusser/Lacan triad but plays way too much of this linguistic philosophy, deconstruction, etc. stuff for his taste. They regularly respond to one another's work.

Not only do I totally agree with this, I often feel the very things postcolonial thinkers usually claim to oppose -- essentialism, totalisation, etc. -- are undermined by the very social position they claim for themselves. You don't need dismiss the significance of the issues or the esteem of many of the thinkers to make the point that postcolonial theory is a mainstay in the western academy and well within the western intellectual tradition.

There's something fundamentally fake about posturing over authenticity.

She would agree though.

There is a sort of weird circle in pondering this though, because the notion of an authentic subaltern voice is precisely what she writes about , and she does have a point. She's very much in Said's camp in questioning the role of Western philosophy in producing the East as a by product of the continual reproduction of the west. Eastern voices thus are presented as an Oriental other to posit the grand western philosophy against. But she brings into this a question of who isn't given a voice. What is silent here. Its pretty much a Derridian manouver, however, because in any deconstruction, the unsaid is always implicit in the trace of what is said. Her clasical example is the Sati , an old (subcontinental) indian practice where the widow of a deceased man would throw herself into his funeral pire and self immolate. The practice was banned in the 1800s under British colonial rule, although in small amounts in still crops up from time to time. Most of our knowledge of the practice comes from two sources, 1) The recordings of the colonial rulers who posited it as a barbaric and stupid practice, and 2) hindu scriptures, notably the story of the godess Sati, and certain interpretations of sections of the Rig Veda. Spivak argues that nowhere do we actually hear the voice of the woman who was immoliating herself. There is no justification given in the colonials recordings that would speak with the womans voice (I doubt she had said "I am being barbaric, wheeee") and Spivak heavily quarrels with the interpretations as we know them of the Rig Veda , and she backs this with a tracing of the genealogy of colonial codification of hindu law as a technique to drag it into line with colonial best practice. In other words, there is either no voice, or at best the voice we hear is a puppet proxy of colonial ambitions. The subaltern, as she puts it, can not speak. But its not entirely erased either, and Spivaks grand project is to try and find an authentic voice and history of the little people of India separate from the colonial imperatives of western scholarship. She's not entirely certain it can. The very project of third world studies must present a colonial imperative of defining an other and thus in turn reproducing the west, and its not clear how this can change. She herself, even as an indian woman, is part of this colonial project.

She takes huge swipes at Foucault and Deleuze and pulls a cavalcade of argumentation to suggest a slightly more open framework (well 3 guesses what she suggests here....) provides a better framework for the project of feminist third world studies, because above all Deconstruction rejects even more comprehensively the sensibility of a notion of universal (read "western") values (read "philosophy"), but by better, still not ideal (Deconstruction, she notes is not Feminist, for instance)

Whether she succeeds in that, its hard to really determine, especially as a westerner, and it doesn't help that by approaching this with a firmly Derridian methodology shes generated some loving difficult texts. She however to her credit seems acutely aware of the fact she's writing in a continental manner about a non contiental subject, and thats why she leaves a giant question mark in her text. Her conclusion seems as unsure as the title. She might conclude "The subaltern can not speak", but I feel she's inverting the statement into a question, and by situating her own question within derridas framework, I wonder if she means "..in this text". Whatever the case, I think she wrote a crucial text, and for what its worth, its not THAT hard. She hasn't gone the full derrida and wrote a hundred pages of poetic on the full stop.

It does suggest an inversion. Can the european think. Or at least without giving the whole game away.

e: I havent read "can the subaltern speak" in a good decade now. Excuse me if I've bungled it.

duck monster fucked around with this message at Jan 23, 2013 around 20:37

# ? Jan 23, 2013 20:17

rudatron: May 31, 2011

MaterialConceptual posted:

No, but the whole point is that it contains within itself the aspiration to cover all human philosophical thought. It is a universalizing project that posits all non-European "philosophical thought" as something to be subsumed within itself in the future. This is the contradiction of European universalism because it simultaneously represents an attempt to impose the European generality as universal (Implying the domination of "Europe" over the world), and the potential for that generality to actually become universal and therefore negate its particularism.

The whole point of trying to create a universality is not impose European generality. You're framing the whole project of trying to create a universal philosophy as this sort of thought-colonialism, as if thought were like physical islands in the real world, which you can plant flags on. It's a transparent attempt to use political history as a bludgeon for your idea - namely that universialism is impossible/undesirable. It is not based on proof against universalism, it's not even honest debate about the advantages/disadvantages on this localism/universalism divides, it's this proclamation that all universalism is racist, because ~reasons~.

rudatron fucked around with this message at Jan 24, 2013 around 06:10

# ? Jan 24, 2013 04:26

Lamdo: Jul 22, 2006

I'm mostly a Rorty fan. At least the dude is understandable. Understand the big debates in analytic philosophy, in continental and american pragmatism whatever those terms mean. After Rorty, i don't really think there should be a subject called philosophy. Like Foucoult designated himself as chair of 'the history of systems of ideas' or whatever the hell. It's all a game. I'm unaware of any new tricks past Derrida and who Rorty designated the important analytic philosophers. He grabbed them james(my fav.), dewey, wittgenstein, mead and pierce and said gently caress it i'm gonna weave it all together... take a few strands of yarn and make a cable try to envision whatever Hegel was talking about. Now i've read secondary texts on all of these fellows, but there is very few that i have time nor the taste to recognize their vision in their primary. i'ts the 21st centuary. Get the gently caress off! Zizek and all the current fad philosphers in Europe... I think they are doing creative stuff, but I think it's more cultural studies, a discipline that's now been invented that spun off philosophy. They have their own methods... Historically they lean on a philosophic education, but they aren't doing anything other then making people conscious of things that they didn't realize they were unconscious of. And some of it is just batshit. Tons of people have developed tools from lit. crit continental, analytic whatever and wove them altogether. This is all I understand and I don't have any college education. But the powers of the Uni. keep you stuck writing stuff about how cogent or how esoteric someones thought-cock is until you get some power i hear. Nope, at a certain point I've gotta say that while you may be right... although it is inconcievable to me... phurrrr!!!!!! oh, pardon, my kettle is whistling...

I think my distaste of the 'European' philosophers today comes from the fact that while they are creative... they generally reside on Mars... not sure if it's the planet or the bar, but they just don't come up with any sort of metal that would hurt if they hit you with it...

Lamdo fucked around with this message at Jan 24, 2013 around 15:42

# ? Jan 24, 2013 12:29

1337JiveTurkey: Feb 17, 2005; Baby, I'm hot, just like your oven...

duck monster posted:

Whether she succeeds in that, its hard to really determine, especially as a westerner, and it doesn't help that by approaching this with a firmly Derridian methodology shes generated some loving difficult texts. She however to her credit seems acutely aware of the fact she's writing in a continental manner about a non contiental subject, and thats why she leaves a giant question mark in her text.

While Spivak is certainly aware of the Western origin of much of her philosophy, I can't say that I'm confident that awareness is reflected across critical theory in general. Especially in the context of colonialism there's a tendency to conflate "Western but critical of the West" with non-Western.

During the Libyan revolution, there were constant allegations that this was a Western-backed coup and an imperialist ploy to take control of the country's oil contracts. I will say that considering Libya was already selling oil to BP the allegations are a tad far-fetched but that's not really relevant to the thread. More relevant were the claims that reports from within Libya relayed through al Jazeera were Western propaganda and that people who were Western by any reasonable definition were the ones truly speaking for the Libyan people. Seeing Noam Chomsky referred to as a non-Westerner while the Libyans themselves that presumably disagreed with him as Westerners reduces the term to meaninglessness. Only by speaking in Western terms of imperialism and authenticity are they really speaking for themselves, otherwise they're just mouthpieces for the West.

I think that sentiment is in many ways worse than that discussed in the article. It's not just "I think that all people in all circumstances should or could be convinced of the correctness of this argument." It's that along with the idea that anyone who doesn't isn't actually thinking for themselves and is really just parroting someone else. Only once they accept the premises are they truly speaking and thinking for themselves.

# ? Jan 24, 2013 18:11

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# ? May 19, 2013 23:02

Lamdo: Jul 22, 2006

Well, that is the idea. That hopefully they aren't coerced, but were free to choose. Look, to claim a person is purely Libyan is like me exclaiming "i'm un amurikun!" And for Europeans to claim a European music they have to take into account that there is a huge diviersity of influences from the orient the middle east etc. before there was the nation states spain italy germany austria etc etc. there is no pure culture and no pure thinking, there is just a lot of difference throughout the world. There is no such thing as a nation of peoples until it is formed via nation states which didn't happen until recent. To say that the west hasn't influenced Libya is wrong. To think of people as 'thinking' in a western sense is also wrong, because it doesn't make any sense to not know thinking. Thinking things can't be specifically defined except in sad attempts because it is too diverse. Sure you can encircle it in quotations 'libyan culture', but they listen to Mariah Carrey in their clubs while I explore middle eastern music and instruments from time to time in my studio. It's just not true.

If I meditated and did deity offers would I be imperialized by India? No. In my country I have the freedom to choose from whatever is available as long as I don't break laws, that are mostly built around not egreigeously harming others. Everything is ethnocentric. There is no such thing as a True Authenticity of a person or peoples. But hopefully they live in a nation where they have the freedom to go visit other countries via their televisions or internet or persons and decide whether they like that way of life or not.

# ? Jan 24, 2013 18:47

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Can non-Europeans think?