well.
there is a great line in bekolo's Aristotle's Plot where the voiceover of the film, let's call him the griot-narrator if you like, says, what do they (the West) got we don't got? he says,
Then what my grandfather told me began to run through my mind.
What is an initiation ceremony? People in pursuit of a goal, whose actions
form scenes divided into crisis, confrontation, climax and resolution. All
wrapped up with pictures and sound. Stories, images, sounds, narrations,
rhythms. Is there anything here that is not African? Fantastic and mystic?
Walt Disney, we got; Lion King, we got: sex, action, violence, we got;
massacres, we got; comedians, music, we got, Paul Simon, we got; dance
and dancers, we got; beauty, ugliness, we got; thinkers, we got; Aristotle,
catharsis, kola nuts, we got; to make it short, what don't we have?
so before we stop dancing in celebration of stomping out our enemy, let's pause slightly (you know, it is that Ph D thing, pausing), and ask what else they got that we don't have
torture chambers--we got
xenophobia--we got
jingoism--we got
desire to rule the world--we got
caviar--we got
snakes--we got
warrior culture--we got
what we need here is a soyinka to explain why when the one malignant ruler is roasting in hell, our own are not dancing with them.
ikhide: i can laugh with you, and say, yes, i hate what osama bin laden promulgated; and what he wrought.
but then, when i reflect on bush's response, the number of people he is responsible for dying in iraq, the extension of warfare in settling america's relationship with the muslim world, the crusades he relaunched in response to the jihads, i have to ask,
we they got that we don't got? when i hear obama recited the pledge of allegiance after celebrating the extrajudicial assassination of bin laden, i cry.
fanaticism? we have that right in our corner, with nutcases burning qur'ans, inciting all the violence they can.
what they got we don't got? tea parties? we got. guns? we got. plenty. too many.
and sacred justifications to kill them all??? we got.
ken
On 5/5/11 7:39 AM, xokigbo@yahoo.com wrote:
Pius, Kenn, et al!
I know now why I would have failed PhD school; you people think too much! There is no clarity in your choices. Who cares whether the moslems or the christians ejaculate before their cowardly killings? I don't. So Western nations go after their enemies with a vengeance and finish them off as they should, what is the issue here? A snake is dead and some jerk is saying enh shebi na woman kill am! Is said snake not dead?
Was Osama bin Idiot not a cowardly snivelling bastard eating Oreo cookies and caviar and hiding in a pretend mansion enjoying Western artifacts of civilization like the rest of you Internet warriors? Did he not deserve to die like the filthy rodent that he is? And when a rat is snuffed out, do we not throw the sonofabitch in the latrine? I hope Osama roasts in the hottest part of hell for eternity for what he did to the unarmed in Kenya, Tanzania, and the United States of America. He is lucky he died swiftly. I would have fed him his ears roasted in jet fuel, the cowardly bastard.
Organized religion is a plague on the world's dispossessed and the holy books are great works of fiction written by insecure men to subjugate women, children, servants, slaves, left handed people, gays, and lesbians, well, scratch thee left handed people part, you get my drift. As we speak, Christianity is ravaging all of West Africa, leaving in her evil wake unthinking dolts and brutalized children. Pius, the children of Akwa Ibom are being murdered as "witches" by "pastors." In the name of Jesus! Allah, I swear God is a drama queen. And a racist. Long live America. I am so proud of Obama for getting that bastard!
- Ikhide
-Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T
From: Pius Adesanmi <piusadesanmi@yahoo.com>Date: Wed, 4 May 2011 20:02:47 -0700 (PDT)ReplyTo: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.comSubject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Conflation Of The Concepts Arab And Muslim
--
La Vonda:
The answer is quite simple and self evident. It is no one's fault that Christian terrorists do not always self-advertise as Christians at the exact moment of sword's contact with the neck. Do you have any evidence that those Christian terrorists in the antebellum south screamed "in Jesus name!" "in Jesus name!" as they lynched their black victims? I thought they screamed their superior race and not their religion?
Today, do you hear screams of "in Jesus name" when two or three racist dunderheads gather in the tea party or the birther movement to denigrate Obama? Do you hear: Obama, you're a monkey or a macaca in the mighty name of Jesus? America's contemporary racist terrorists won't even own up to their racism let alone scream that they do those things in the name of Jesus Christ and their religion. The best you'll get is the loaded we are defending "our values".
Well, go to northern Nigeria. Shouts of "Allahu akbar" is often the last thing the infidel hears from the Almajiri mob before the sword kisses the neck in broad daylight.
Some of us lived in Nigeria's core north. Some of us have our entire extended families there even as we write - perpetually marked as the non-believer, permanent potential targets of the sword of Allahu Akbar-screaming mobs. You will understand why this is reality beyond the poco-pomo diction of Gayatri Spivak for us.
Blame the terrorists for the association of Islam with terrorism in the global subconscious. They are the ones who damage their religion and identity. That is where the problem you are talking about starts. Don't blame the victims. The victims aren't responsible for the imagery of the Talibanic-bearded, Allahu-Akbar-screaming, sword-swinging mob. Lavonda, when you get the time, do google Gideon Akaluka, Grace Ushang, and Christiana Oluwasesin and read up on them. Trust me, you won't return here talking theory and Spivak if you read up on those names.
Blame Moslem intellectuals like Bangura and too many of his counterparts from northern Nigeria who articulate meretricious discourses and praxes of attenuation - comforted by the American nonsense that is political correctness - rather than face the problem head-on. One is no longer in the mood to comfort attenuators like Bangura by feeding them Spivakian abstractions intravenously to make them feel-good.
I find it also annoying that the bad rap they believe Islam is getting is even more important to these attenuators than the lives of victims.
Pius
--- On Thu, 5/5/11, Lavonda Staples <lrstaples@gmail.com> wrote:
From: Lavonda Staples <lrstaples@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Conflation Of The Concepts Arab And Muslim
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Date: Thursday, 5 May, 2011, 3:12
In the abstract, the work of Spivak, "Can The Subaltern Speak" is also helpful in theorizing this topic. I'm constantly amazed at how we have formed opinions of people we don't see, hear, or even truly know. We don't say, "the Christian terrorists who lynched Black men in post World War II south." We don't say, "the Christian doctors who practiced involuntary sterilization on women such as Fannie Lou Hamer in 1950's Mississippi." We don't do that at all. But we ALWAYS identify the word 'terrorist' with the West's neo-contemporary Untouchables - Muslims. While they remain, in definitive terms only, as an exemplar of Spivak's subaltern; a multitudinous unspoken minority indeed.
La Vonda R. Staples
On Wed, May 4, 2011 at 8:59 PM, Abdul Bangura <theai@earthlink.net> wrote:
--The following essays are quite informative in understanding the conflation of the concepts Islam and Muslim:Ahmed Sokarno Abdel-Hafiz. 2000. "The Representation of Islam, Arabs and Muslims...." International Journal of Communication 12, 2:103-117."Is the Life of the Muslim Arab and/or Muslim?"Nadine Nober. 2008. "'Look, Mohammed the Terrorist Is Coming!' Cultural Racism, Nation-Based Racism, and Intersectionality of Oppressions after 9/11." The Scholar and Feminist Online 6, 3."Arab at ASU: Building Bridges."M. Lo and Aman Nadhiri. 2010. "Contextualizing 'Muridiyyah' within the American Muslim Community." African Journal of Political Science and International Relations 4, 6:231-40.G. C. David. "Studying the xotic Other in the Classroom: The Portrayal of Arab..."
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La Vonda R. StaplesAdjunct Professor, Department of Social SciencesCommunity College of the District of Columbia314-570-6483"It is the duty of all who have been fortunate to receive an education to assist others in the same pursuit."
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