Date: Sun, 30 Jul 2000 11:58:05 -0700
Subject: Re: White knights - Dave..


Dave:
Tsk, Tsk....while I empathize with your patience running out...especially 
when Eric keeps saying that he is English....we do need to remember that he 
does admit to being half Dutch on the maternal side which would make his 
"mother's tongue" Dutch...so don't get fooled by the fact that he writes in 
English and lives in Holland.....so that he is technically an English man 
living in his mother's land....which was liberated from the Facists by the 
English........merely a note about facts as stated by Eric....
And again...perhaps you need reminding that Eric's opening gambit was about 
language - writing in minority languages - we need to remember that is what 
he does - he is a TRANSLATOR - translating into/out of Swedish, Estonian, 
Dutch, Afrikaans (?) and possibly others that he hasn't mentioned.......so 
Eric gets around....and his interest in european/non-racial poco is very 
logical....

Translators have to remain in a meta position to move between language and 
if translating between the ethos of several "cultures" it would require 
pertinent cultural fodder which can be gathered in a variety of ways 
through period writings, travel, living in cosmopolitan centers, reading 
periodicals and newspapers and of course engaging with the "locals" of each....

While some of us may be involved in real politik and seek to theorize about 
it as you, Dave, say, to gain some reflective insight into it/ourselves - 
to create spaces in which to live - I would imagine that this may be the 
space in which the translators live plying their trade....

While some of us might seek to develop theory in which to find "common 
ground" at levels of abstraction in which to communicate and comment on 
translations....a translator probably needs the "raw material of argument" 
with which to understand what is happening on ground zero from which the 
discussion is originating....since the translator needs to be accountable 
for all the levels of ethos and particularly the one that is usually the 
most elusive because of change is the one on the ground.... probably why 
taxi driving can be particularly useful research....

Someone mentioned Kristeva (marlene takes out the canon and swings it into 
the poco crowd....;-))) who, in "Strangers to Ourselves" (1991, Cambridge: 
p. 181: Translation by Roudiez) says:
"The foreigner is neither a race or a nation. The foreigner is neither 
glorified as a secret Volksgeist nor banished as disruptive or rationalist 
urbanity.  Uncanny, foreignness is within us: we are our own foreignness, 
we are divided."

While theory may help some of us structure "das Umheimliche", the uncanny, 
others may want to keep it repressed, a secret and harness the power of the 
"strangeness/erotic/exotic" in the liminal space where the divide 
meets....after all where would the entertainment/travel/sex industries be 
without it....

And while Sangeeta may find what has been happening on the list exciting 
while others are frustrated with it...it may suggest particular differences 
in structure of those realms of experience on the ground...how it works 
......some others may find it boring/negative/positive/ painful 
whatever...suggesting another kinds of structuring of those realms of 
experience...(for a great theoretical piece on how motivational structuring 
creates states of boredom/excitement etc...depicted via brain scans....see: 
http://www.swin.edu.au/sbs/pub/rt/rtscan1.htm

The bottom line is that some of us may be engaged in the tensions of the 
uncertainty of real politik that don't write so well in English and the 
"disconcerted logic" that doesn't translate well from one ethos to another 
to suit the transpersonal psychological modus operandi of others...

I don't mind a conversation but I reserve the right as do you Dave to be my 
own translator....that is what I expect from poco ....not to be "liberated" 
by anyone....
Marlene R. Atleo, PhD Candidate, EDST, UBC
?h ?h naa tuu kwiss - Ahousaht First Nation, Nuu-chah-nulth


"We only become what we are by the radical and deep-seated refusal of that 
which others have made of us"
Franz Fanon

Mining the mind: Resource extraction in the "new" frontier.



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