[Nettime-bold] Re: <nettime> Fwd: The South and Ameri(kkk)a for Theorists

["dan s wang" <danwang@mindspring.com>]

----------
>From: FrodeauxB@aol.com
>To: nettime-l@bbs.thing.net
>Subject: Re: <nettime> Fwd: The South and Ameri(kkk)a for Theorists
>Date: Wed, May 23, 2001, 2:37 PM
>

> Dear Mr. Odita:
> Have all of your two years "in the South" been in Florida? If so, perhaps
> you
> might consider looking at other places in the region besides the one that
> was
> colonized by the East Coast retirees and the entertainment industry. Then
> you
> may be able to offer a critique of an entire region through other than
> through a distorted microcosm. Is all of Africa like Egypt? The Democratic
> Republic of Congo? Morocco? Chad? Libya? The world's other USA either before
> or after Tutu and Mandela? I think not and suggest you expand your thinking
> in the same manner.

Why, are two years in Florida not enough to qualify one as an observer
of the local and regional ways? It could be argued that getting
hassled by the local police, as Mr Odita did, makes him a more
sensitive judge of all that goes on rather than less.

Isn't your counter-analogy completely off in terms of scale? Who said
anything about generalizing regional qualities to the whole of a
continent? Formulating your counter-analogy as such a gross
exaggeration smacks of the lamest reactionary counterargument. From
your remarks above it is quite reasonable to believe that you did not
fully read--and certainly did not comprehend--the whole of Mr Odita's
post. Moreover, choosing to use African names as your counter-analogy
strikes me as unnecessarily hostile rhetoric. There is an implied
nativism at work when you throw counter examples from the immigrant's
home continent (!?) back in his or her face. Whether this was intended
or not does not matter; it is the working of such rhetoric, and I
"suggest you expand your thinking" to include some (not much--just
some) awareness of your own defensiveness in the face of what was
simply one person's observations.

As far as Florida goes as 'a distorted microcosm' --okay, sure, if
you're talking about certain parts of south and the west coast of
Florida, then yes, lots of retirees and all that. But Florida is a
pretty big state, with surprisingly vast rural areas that are still
very much in tune with the rest of the rural American South.

If Florida provides a distorted view of the American South in anyway,
it is because the state is more cosmopolitan than many of the other
Southern states. I find it entirely believable that Mr Odita, if he
were to live in some other parts of the South, would find in fact an
even more extreme Ameri(kkk)a than the one he reported.

dan s. wang 


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