coco fusco on Thu, 8 Jan 2004 06:18:10 +0100 (CET) |
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Re: <nettime> Old Left etc |
Dear Aditya I did read your position carefully, but it seems that you prefer not to address the issues that I raised. 1. There are indeed wars of position going on among leftists and activists and politically oriented artists and your text certainly can be read in relation to those polemics, regardless of your age or what year you began your activism. This is not so much about the details of your critique of Old Leftists who are not please with the WSF - it has to do with the underlying motives for endless intergenerational battles, and the ways in which these battles are taken up within European and American contexts when they appear, on the horizons of discursives fields like Nettime - as tribal warfare. It is the ideological orientation of the text that I was writing about, not your person, as I do not know you. Any text that calls defines a political field in terms of old and new is indeed a manifesto for a war of position. It's about who is who, whose position is right, good, superior, desirable, true, etc. Your text was more focused on trashing the Old Left in India than explaining what makes the New Left better. It seems that was is bothering you now is that I question the political motives of those who constantly trashed other leftists in the name of the left - it reeks of OLD LEFTIST style purges and sectarian squabbling. It is also symptomatic of the attitude of new leftist upstarts who want to clear their playing fields in order to look like the only people on the block, or at least the only ones worth looking at and talking to. 2. Those wars of position are indeed generational, even if the ages don't always divide neatly. Schools of thought can be viewed as generational. Your critique of the Old Left doesn't refer to the ages of those involved, but to their ideological positions which you sought to trash. This kind of venting against leftist schools of thought emerges regularly from the Sarai camp, so often that I have in the past made inquiries to South Asian colleagues to try to figure out what it is so important for new leftists in India to launch diatribes against other leftists, other postcolonials, other South Asians outside of South Asia, and other people of color -- as if there were no other more important issues, or more significant opponents. Had you spent equal time in your text divulging your critique of mulitnational capitalism, the corporations that are the primary agents of globalization, and the neoliberal technocrats who dominate new media, etc., I might have been less skeptical. 3. Your claim that you are not really associated with Sarai I would also take issue with, especially since the unusual haughtiness of your tone would seem to suggest that you share the attitude of Sarai members toward more than a few "postcolonials," including myself. At present, within the context of nettime discussions, Sarai represents a generation and an ideological stance for the mostly European and American readership of the list. Regardless of your age or history, you enter that discourse with Sarai attached to your email address - it is not a coincidence, since as you write, they are your friends. Sarai is not a huge ISP like AOL, it is a small media organization,and you chose the affilation consciously, as more than an indiscriminate consumer, much in the same way that artists of a certain ilk in the US choose thing.net. Sarai's cultural expression and ideologicaly positions are well known within the context of nettime. In fact, I would argue that Sarai represents India, and Indian new media culture for the readers of nettime, and the attendants of many new media exhibition and art shows in the global art circuit. 4. Finally, my substantive points about Old Leftist positions in Latin American had to do with what I perceive as a chic anti-globalizationist stance that dismisses any concern for nationalism, or such quaint ideas as cultural integrity and cultural identity as either crypto fundamentalist or passe. I found that your text echoes that position. As I mentioned before, there are good reasons in many Latin American contexts to be wary about dispensing with nationalisms and the nation state altogether. And there are many who do not view today's global culture without borders as democratic or desirable -- and they are not all ethnic fundamentalists. Some of them are the most effective and lucid activists and political visionaries of the "global south". While the agendas listed in the WSF in India look very interesting, I am too far away to assess how inclusive they are, or how meaningful they are to activists working on a day to day basis there. What I can tell you is that I've also been working since the 1970s, and know scores of activists and politically oriented artists in the US and Latin America who are part of that Old Left you despise, and who are also part of new left social movements. They never go to anti-globalization events. They don't see them as a priority, or they don't agree with their premises, or they even see them as imperialist in of themselves, or just as a waste of time. Some very dedicated and effective activists working on the same issues that people only TALK ABOUT on nettime prefer to work locally, or see those local tasks as so huge and complicated that having to spend time on theorizing with distant foreigners is just a big waste of time. It's just like playing the native informant all over again. I may not agree with everything they say always, but I respect their priorities and I know they are not the enemy. Best Coco Fusco --- aditya@sarai.net wrote: > Apropos of Coco Fusco's response to my piece on the WSF and the Old > Left in India, a bit of factual clarification and some small comments > are in order. She talks of intergenerational 'wars of position' - > conflating my position with that of Sarai (I presume, because of my > email ID) and seems to suggest that the 'younger crowd' has taken to > attacking the Old Left because it has a vested interest in the "time > and space of global circuits", which it seeks to protect by > eliminating others from the competition. <...> __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! 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