Message-ID: <199702130511.AAA25324@shell.monmouth.com> Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 00:11:45 -0500 From: Wilbur Streett <mailto:wstreett@MONMOUTH.COM> Subject: Re: Nationalism and Patriotism (and capitalism) To: mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU
This post from another list outlines a significant topic that many people on this list seem to overlook..We hate the structure that is in power until we need it..
I posted a message about individual cooperation and it was ignored on this list. I guess empire building and politics is the reason for most of the noise that we're seeing on this list currently... But then as this message points out, we can't have a social structure without a social structure. sigh...
Wilbur
>X-Sender: mailto:idea@hs1
>Approved-By: "H-Ideas Co-Editor (David Bailey)" <mailto:idea@HS1.HST.MSU.EDU>
>Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 23:14:03 -0500
>Reply-To: H-NET Intellectual History List <mailto:H-IDEAS@h-net.msu.edu>
>Sender: H-NET Intellectual History List <mailto:H-IDEAS@h-net.msu.edu>
>From: "H-Ideas Co-Editor (David Bailey)" <mailto:idea@hs1.hst.msu.edu>
>Subject: Re: Nationalism and Patriotism (and capitalism)
>To: Multiple recipients of list H-IDEAS <mailto:H-IDEAS@h-net.msu.edu>
>
>Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 17:44:14 -0600
>From: "William B. Turner" <mailto:drturner@mindspring.com>
>
>If I might link Mr. Lough's question about the possibility of immanent
>emancipation to Mr. Kahan's complaint that no one ever defines their terms
>-- an important problem, it seems to me -- I would offer from Foucault the
>suspicion that "nationalism" and "capitalism" are "ideal significations,"
>(see "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History") that reflect more the discursive
>rules of modern scholarship than they do anything about the past. By
>"discursive rules," I mean the principles that we use to constitute the
>objects of our inquiry, which in turn suggests that the connection between
>our terms and the external world may be tenuous, but will certainly be
>difficult to specify with any accuracy.
>
>Rather than explore the history of either "nationalism" or "capitalism," of
>course, Foucault chose to approach the question of the immanence of
>emancipation (he once claimed that, had he read Frankfurt School authors in
>graduate school he would have saved himself much time) via the specific
>practices from which we might wish to emancipate ourselves. This
>investigation led to his highly controversial claim that there is neither
>immanence nor emancipation because power relations will be a characteristic
>of any social order and we cannot specify a standard for determining in
>advance whether any given practice of domination is good or bad, and
>therefore whether we should resist it or not. We all hate the police when
>they're clubbing black motorists senseless, but we damned well want them to
>come when someone breaks into our house. Or, a more ambiguous case that
>impinges on professors more directly -- do we allow the FBI more leeway to
>tap phones if it will decrease the incidence of airplanes exploding in midair?
>
>Actually, the Oklahoma City bombing might offer a good example of national
>identity from which to explore its relationship to economic relationships.
>Everyone assumed that some "Muslim terrorist" must have done it, and they
>arrested that poor guy in London before they found the white boy whom they
>now think really did it. Where is the connection to "capitalism" here?
>
>William B. Turner
>Middle Tennessee State University
mailto:>wturner@frank.mtsu.edu >
>
----------------------------------------- Putting a Human Face On Technology ;-) -----------------------------------------