Fw: sprouts of capitalism

Dr. Barendse,
Thanks kindly for the input.

My post:
| >I find it ironic that both England and the US are for her models,
| >while the rest are submerged in a politics of ressentiment. This
| >echoes the notion of Western vs. Eastern (or poltical vs. cultural)
| >nationalism of Hans Kohn--the former being integrative and civic
while
| >the latter is divisive and violent, torn by ethnic strife.
|
Your reply:
| Rubbish - where is Ireland located again ?

I must say I believe I am smelling the same rubbish as you. That it is
so pungent may mean the stuffing in my straw-man has indeed begun to
rot. Nor are we the first to notice by a long shot.

I think Ireland is fascinating. Surely this sort of orientalist
dualism of West versus East (though Kohn largely meant Eastern Europe,
I believe) sees Ireland as the "East." And, by the way, the literature
on Ireland in Korea during its colonial period (esp. ca 1920s) was
both extensive and sympathetic, with Ireland forming a sort of
metaphor for discussing Korea's predicament in code, so to speak, so
as to beat the censors. Haven't read much of this yet, but it puts
Ireland in an odd sort of position, like an internal colony.

It is provocative to oppose the notion of internal colony to that of
internal development. I guess this was my point, too, in emphasizing
the English model: that we credit it with autochthonous production of
wealth out of purely domestic human and natural resources but this
whole argument totally seems to forget about Ireland, just for
starters. Maybe it is after all too much of a straw man?

Me:
| It is my understanding
| >that a ws perspective, and I would add a postcolonial one, would
see
| >Britian (I should be saying Britain here, I guess) and the prestige
of
| >the British revolution into a liberal modernity as very much an
effect
| >of ideological dominance in some sense rather than a result of
actual
| >democratic practice.
|
Your reply:
| Let's not hope so - it would amount to importing an English
nationalism,
| which is I think more insidious (because so little noticed) than any
sexism
| or colonialism

I am not quite sure I get it, and perhaps you misunderstood me. I was
saying the English model was influential because of rhetoric and
because of England's leading position in the system--and because of
its continuities with US centrality in the next (this) century--it was
not influential because it actually was the birthplace of modern
democracy and progress, etc.

On Greenfeld's text:
| That's a good example of the innate nationalism, yes jingoism, of
much - if
| not most - historic writing coming from England (mind you NOT
Britain) which
| is this engrained in English writing that the English don't even
notice and
| which comes from BOTH `left' and `right' writers (for E.P. Thompson,
say,
| was as much a `Whig' as Thomas Babbington Macaulay - without him
even
| noting -)

I thought it was a good example. Greenfeld's book struck me as a
classic recent expression of this. And I also thought it was prevalent
in both the left and the right, which is what makes the problem of
nationalism (and the related ones of orientalism and development) so
interesting and so challenging.

| But who - who ever - would even DARE to argue
| small, poor, Portugal might have been AHEAD of the rest of Europe
???? Not
| even the Portuguese I would daresay - whose historic literature on
things
| after 1500 is full of self-denigration..

That is good; I like that. Self-denigration should be a proper
historiographic value right
alongside objectivity. What would the image of such a world be?

Jim Freda
jfreda@ucla.edu