From: rhinoceros (rhinoceros@freemail.gr)
Date: Wed Sep 24 2003 - 17:40:11 MDT
[Jonathan Davis]
To understand why these agreements are being undermined, I recommend "The West and the Rest" by Roger Scruton.
[Kharin]
Hmmm.
http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/commentary/story/0,4386,210796,00.html
A right to represent the world
By DEEP K. DATTA-RAY
<snip>
Eminent British philosopher Roger Scruton argues the UN has no right to represent the planet since it is a European product - steeped, he says, in Western values which are alien to what he calls, using an outdated colonial-era term, 'East of Suez'.
The phrase itself is Orientalist in Edward Said's pejorative sense for it reduces the Technicolor hues of non-European life to a monochrome.
Similarly, Scruton's European values are Occidentalist for they deny Westerners their individuality and the complexities of History.
Both terms have a long history. Karl Marx spoke of the 'Asiatic mode of production' as being inferior to some standard European system.
Such monotone arguments form the basis of Scruton's case. He shackles Europeans with the same handcuffs that Orientals found so repressive. Chafing at generalisations, Westerners might welcome the end of the myth of 'Occidentalism'.
<end snip>
[rhinoceros]
A small pedantic side note. I am not sure if Datta-Ray was just waffling when talking about the "inferior Asiatic mode of production" but, from what I recall, Marx used the term for a rather specific way of social organization which occured at several places in ancient times.
http://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/a/s.htm
You can find lots of references using google. This topic seems to be very popular with both Marxists and Marxologists.
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