taking things personally helps no one. the sycophants to whom i refer do
not include you and no one in this discussion list, as far as i can
tell. please do not lecture about how grey the world actually is ...
that misses the point entirely. critical perspectives must be grounded
in understanding actual power relations, rather than evading the issue
altogether, as, i am afraid, is done when failing to tackle
institutional racism.
saed
D F J Wood wrote:
>> such a
>> stance promotes the Israeli government and its sycophantic
>> academics by default.
>>
>
> Oh, I see now. If you're not for us, you're against us. The position
> which we all so heartily mock when it comes from the likes of George W.
> Bush, but which we uncritically applaud when it comes from those backing
> 'the right causes.'
>
> This is exactly the kind of thing that I meant by being unable to apply
> critical reasoning universally, and is exactly why I am tired of
> academic discourse on this. If we (as academics) have anything to offer
> the world that is different from the arguments and actions of those who
> are politicians or activists or fighters, it is because we can the
> critical thinking that we have been given the space and time to develop.
> Otherwise we might as well engage just as polticians, or activists or
> fighters and not pretend there's anything particularly based in the fact
> that we are academics that drives us - 'critical thinking' merely
> becomes a servant of whatever it is we believe already.
>
--
Salvatore Engel-Di Mauro
Department of Geography, SUNY New Paltz
1 Hawk Drive, New Paltz, NY 12561
tel: 1/845/2572991, fax: 1/845/2572992
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
Senior Editor
Capitalism Nature Socialism: A Journal of Ecosocialism
Editor
ACME: An international e-journal for critical geographies
http://www.acme-journal.org/
|