Subject: RE: FW: Election 2000
Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2000 12:05:02 +0100


I don't agree. As Stuart Hall has said, the US is the imperial power of our
day and, to give just one example, what happens in the US elections will
ultimately have a bearing on festering neo-colonial conflicts like
Israel/Palestine. How can we ignore it?

Lawrence Phillips
Goldsmiths College,
University of London

PS. For the record, I'm not an American.

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-postcolonial-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
[mailto:owner-postcolonial-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu]On Behalf Of
Michael Hensen
Sent: Friday, October 27, 2000 11:45
To: postcolonial-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
Subject: Re: FW: Election 2000


please DON'T use this list for political pamphlets. it is called
'postcolonial' for some reason... . they'd be more useful for any list on
politics
etc.

michael



> Fellow List-Members:
>
> 	There are good questions about whether we should include
> e-pamphleteering in the list or not. At least that kind of
> pamphleteering
> devoted to political party recruitment. We do allow it for other
> things. Not that it is necessarily bad, but perhaps we should take a
> good
> look at it. Anyway, it allows me to note briefly something which I have
> been working on for the ALTA conference on Argumentation, namely
> "argument
> >from conscience."
>
> 	On the letter directed at Nader:  I find the letter particularly
> insulting. As a voter and citizen that has tried consistently to combat
> a
> creeping cynicism about our politics-as-usual and campaigns in this
> country the letter reinforces two ideas that I find... well, yes very
> much
> compatible with a colonial state of mind:
>
> 1.  That citizens in this country owe a vote to some party and that a
> certain party (here the Democratic party) is guaranteed any number of
> votes from the electorate.
>
> Responding to the attack that states that he would be weakening Gore,
> Nader responded recently that nobody is guaranteed votes in this
> country.
> You as a candidate and party have to work for them and earn them. The
> Democratic party is not guaranteed my vote just because I happen to have
> more liberal leanings and not want to see Bush elected. If Gore wanted
> my
> vote, he should have earned it and convinced me it was right to give it
> to
> him.
>
> 2.  A vote considered the way the letter presented is a commodity to be
> traded and negotiated. It is taken from the realm of what we've
> understood
> so far as "conscience" and in a quite anti-democratic way inserted as
> another sign of consumption. It does this by faking an argument from
> conscience.  Granted, this might not be new, nor just happening in this
> election season. But, the argument of the letter brings it to the fore;
> this campaign is about citizens as consumers of political products
> which,
> if anybody pays attention to campaign funding, will recognize that more
> and more these "products" are corporate goods. If this is the argument,
> then by cracky, Gore, Inc. has not sold it to me.
>
> The letter is a thinly disguised fear appeal. To the extent that it
> demands a response perhaps we can take it up in terms of the symbolic
> violence it does to the citizenry in the ways outlined (in very drafty
> mode yes) above.
>
> Best,
>
> Nathaniel I. Cordova
> University of Maryland
> cordova-AT-wam.umd.edu
>
>
>
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>

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