Defense of Truth

In a brilliant critique of the postcolonial concept of "hybridity" as a cosmopolitan goal for the mixing of humanity, Jonathan Friedman defines racism and essentialism in a surprisingly clear way before explaining how the implications of these concepts ensure that hybridity is a self-defeating philosophy. First, there are two separate arguments that are made in conjunction with racism: "All X are bearers of a set of traits, physical or cultural" Cultural traits are reducible to physical ones Point 1 above is racism proper (eg. all blacks have small brains but athletic physiques, or all blacks are naturally animist), and point 2 is merely essentialism--the idea that beings have an essence from which their traits and practices can be derived (eg. Blacks are naturally animist because their brains are too small to understand reason and empirical evidence) Which seems the more insidious to you: racism or essentialism? My reflexive answer would be essentialism of course, ...

More literary theory today from a paper I'm proud of. I may comment on Thiong'o's equation of culture with language later, but for now you need an intro… How humans determine what is self is a topic of much theoretical debate. However many of these theories of self-identification highlight the twin fundamental notions of culture and language as unavoidably instrumental in the construction of identity. The most germane of these to our discussion derives from the French neo-Freudian psychologist Jacques Lacan's extrapolations on Ferdinand de Saussure's principles of semiotics. Mainstream linguistic thought from its inception as a separate discipline in Saussure's time, has pointed out the arbitrary nature of the link between the signification of any given (linguistic) symbol and its associated signifying form (whether graphic or phonic). Dividing a sign into signifiant and signifié is a powerful way to theorize language, since it emphasizes its social nature. I...

As part of my dissertation, I'm preparing to study the problem of the concept of "Nation" (as opposed to state, or ethnicity) in Africa. It's a particularly knotty problem in a lot of ways. First, one of the conditions the world imposes on itself is that there be states, governmental entities, with sovereign control over territories (whether they choose to enforce borders, or any other measure of their sovereignty is another matter and does not touch the at least formal equality of sovereignty that is assumed to exist among all nations of the world for the purposes of international communication, trade, diplomacy, and all other relations). The globe has been mapped, and boundaries have been in place, imposed or not, and now circumscribe groups of people which derive their rights only as citizens of states. African states cannot "enter", as it were, conditions of modernity, or any rapport with the world outside, without first developing states which operate ...