On 4/16/07, Doug Henwood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On Apr 16, 2007, at 12:08 AM, Anthony D'Costa wrote:
> The Roy posts were illuminating. They illustrate how difficult it
> is to
> position yourself on the left if you are materially and
> professionally successful.
> In fact virtually all academics would fit this bill and academics
> are most
> prone to such attacks. Though these days any middle class individual
> (self-identified or income-determined) would be guilty of not
> sharing the
> peasant/proletariat identity/experience.
I don't approve of attacks on leftists because they're "privileged."
It generally requires some privilege to get the time, perspective,
and education to be a critic. "Organic" intellectuals are pretty
rare, and once they achieve any recognition, are likely to become
less organic with time. Who can blame them, either? My pal Sean
Jacobs used to use a lyric from a Brazilian samba as a sig quote -
only intellectuals love poverty, poor people love luxury. But
intellectuals most love the poverty of others - it makes them
authentic. Part of my problem with Roy is that a lot of her western
fans don't get any of this. For them, she performs the role of native
informant - emotions rendered in florid prose, as one expects of the
exotic. But I'm not going to persist in this.
Where's the evidence that intellectuals such as Roy and those who
agree with Roy in part or in whole love the poverty of others, rather
than making a preferential option to side with the poor in struggle?
I heard a story of an appearance by Rigoberta Menchu many years ago
in a radical chic venue in north London. The audience loved her while
she was the authentic Indian in her native dress. But when she
alluded to Lenin's quote about rural electrification plus Soviet
power, the audience turned on her. Ok, so Sardar Sarovar is a
brutalist project - how then to get electricity to rural India?
I thought that people who were critical of Narmada were critical of it
because it was not going to provide much electricity to the poor in
rural India, or urban India for that matter, and those displaced by it
do not get justly compensated for it.
--
Yoshie
