Dan wrote, "Along with Western imperialism came cultural anthropology
(studies of the
Other), Comparative this-n-that, etc., leading to a self-critical look
at
our own Western ways, to the point of self-loathing--as is practised so
well in academia.  Anyway, all this is said as an "instigation."  To
provoke frontal-lobe activity."
==Dan

Indeed.  And just preceding full-blown imperialism, there were
missionaries.  Everyone knows they were only doing the Lord's work.
(Just like the anthropologists were only furthering the progress of
disinterested note-taking and information gathering regarding the
habits of cultural others, and are therefore quite innocent of "Western
imperialism".)

Some thinkers, I will grant, have taken it upon themselves to practice
self-loathing for all of us.  But this minority of thinkers does not by
itself explain the growth of comparativist projects, which largely
arose because of the increased numbers of "non-traditional" students in
the humanities, such as those who originate in formerly colonized
territory.  The "normal" (read white American) graduate students take
classes side by side with their South Asian counterparts, and realize
abruptly that some adjustments must be made to their own parochial (and
often quite innocent, I feel I must add) preconceptions about global
politics and migration and Caliban's structural role in  _The Tempest_.
  This process responds to more than an intellectual desire to
demonstrate adequate self-loathing, and very well might leave people
asking , honestly, what was so undisposably great about the Great Books
of the West.  In other words, some encounters with what they call
"others" will oblige people to rethink their assumptions and begin
thinking more critically, less constrained by this reified entity known
vaguely as "the West".

Vice versa, South Asian graduate students have just as much adjustment
to perform.  Many of my Indian colleagues grew up on a steady diet of
British classics, and very few of them had read much by Indian authors
while living in India.  The colonial legacy lives on for them in this
way.  Many turn to post-colonial critiques of the West as one of the
only available tools for understanding the complex effects colonization
leaves in its wake.  They, clearly, are not practicing self-loathing,
any more than Toni Morrison was when she wrote that _Moby-Dick_ is
really about race, and the whiteness of the whale has a meaning that
even Ishmael never thought to gloss.  She is not trying to make white
people loathe themselves.  There is no lasting value in doing so.  But
to understand how the racial system in America left its marks in the
most unexpected places is to do what a good critic does: read, and pay
attention to the content that a book can't quite express in the open.

For one final perspective on the self-loathing efficacy of academics,
please see this charming cartoon by Tom Tomorrow:
http://archive.salon.com/comics/tomo/2001/12/03/tomo/index.html

Everyone keep your heads covered -- today's a scary day,
Jon

On Thursday, February 13, 2003, at 08:34  AM, Daniel Pearlman wrote:
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