“Was not their mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been living?—a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind, animate and inanimate—‘nature,’ as people used to call it—as one thing, and mankind as another, it was natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make ‘nature’ their slave, since they thought ‘nature’ was something outside them” — William Morris


Sunday, October 2, 2016

What's Wrong with Postcolonial and Decolonial Critiques of OOO? Part 1 (the big picture)

I'm not going to do a long peroration here, as I have done when this has come up in lectures, and frequently, maybe five times in as many months. That will be part 2.

The big reason why these critiques miss the target is that they rely on an idea of the incommensurability of cultures.

This idea stems from strong correlationism (Hegel).

Strong correlationism is equated with imperialism.

So the critique of OOO on that basis is a symptom of the very imperialism that OOO is in fact trying to rescue thinking from, by departing from strong correlationist orthodoxy.

How ironic is that? I certainly feel at least "ironic" when I'm thinking about these critiques.

Okay, more soon.

1 comment:

D. E.M. said...

Anthropocentrism=white supremacy, really