No, Mr. Cox. I am not "integral of the culture." "Integral" implies a
complicity which I reject. It was no more than a clumsy attempt on Wei's
part to get me to entrap myself in the exchange. The kind of agitprop
you get from ted Koppel or Sandy Berger. And I'll invite you to refrain
from telling me what I am and am not part of. CP

Carrol Cox wrote:
>
> [log in to unmask] wrote:
>
> > In a message dated 06/01/2000 5:49:13 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
> > [log in to unmask] writes:
> >
> > <<   And are you [carlo parcelli] not an integral part of American culture? >>
> >
> > I can say with absolute certainty and without hesitation, that the answer to
> > this question is obviously no, . . . .
> > ......  the very last word that one would use in describing carlo
> > parcelli's role in american culture is 'integral'.  an absolutely
> > preposterous proposition.....
>
> This seems to assume an individualist conception of a culture (or a
> society) -- that a culture is merely the sum of its parts, and that
> therefore only "big parts" really count. This also makes relations merely
> accidents of a culture's or an individual's "essence." But if relations are
> real, if wherever and whenever we find ourselves we are always already
> caught up in an ensemble of social relations -- if we do not have but
> *are* our history, then it is impossible to say that any one "individual"
> is or is not "integral" to a culture. The question is meaningless. If X
> or Y (or Carlo) exists, than he/she is certainly "integral" to some
> culture -- that is, has no existence independentlyof  or in abstraction
> from that culture.
>
> Carrol