Which history pertains to the "history [which] currently accommodates both
positions [epistemology and hermeneutics] even if these positions tend to be
exclusive"? The recent history of this list, the history of recent Western
philosophy as Rorty depicts it, present-day intellectual history, a history
which, by definition, accommodates these positions, . . . .
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Statement: For example, one might think along the lines of a recent and fairly
bad
movie at that, _The Patriot_. This movie makes for an interesting reading of
history. What history is it is the question? Is this War for Independence
about Kosovo, about Iraq, about Vietnam, about the American Civil War, about
the American War of Independence,or more off-handedly, about the
Irish-British struggle?>
Response form Chandrika Ghosh: "This does not lead us very far - simple
enumerations do not logically add up to a way of speaking about history much
less speaking historically about events."
................................................................................
.............................................................................
The point: _The Patriot_concerns war and, in particular, the War of Independence
fought by the American revolutionaries against the British. However, the
question I am asking is both a categorical one and an historicist one.
What happens to the normative values of good and evil in a war? _The Patriot_
works hard to set up a binary opposition between the British and the Americans,
yet this opposition of good and evil breaks down once war itself becomes total
war for total war undoes such differences. Once the boundary between civilian
and soldier disappears so does the ethics that this difference enforces; _The
Patriot_ works to keep this distinction in tact, but for reasons already stated
(the militia-underground in opposition to the army, for example), it does not
always succeed. Acts of supposed expediency become the norm.
My list of wars is both a categorical series and an attempt to establish an
historical context in light of recent history--historical representations of
history tend to be misrepresentations of our own history after all. My question
is, "What history is it [that informs _The Patriot_] is the question?"
So the statement, "This does not lead us very far - simple enumerations do not
logically add up to a way of speaking about history much less speaking
historically about events," is a forgetting about the event, _The Patriot_.
There's no historical summation in this list of wars, just points of reference.
I have offered a listing of wars in order to establish a molecular dissolution
of the molar category: war.
This dissolution also works to molecularize the molar opposition of good
Americans and evil British and reveal something more complex, a present-day
history in which the good guys have become the bad guys, i.e. the good guys are
also the bad guys. Again, our present-day history is a history in which
atrocity has become normative--see _The Unforgiven_.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
JMC
|