Letters to the Editor
AJCalhoun
Published Letters: 1079 Editor's Choice: 133
-
Intellectuals Are Easy
[Read the article: How Edward Said took intellectuals for a ride]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I find it disheartening that Kamiya extends Irwin's intention into a total gutting of Said's work. While Irwin has largely taken "Orientalism" and clarified or put a finer point on some of Said's contentions, I don't feel he came at Said with a chainsaw. That's just Kamiya's fantasy.
That being said, how important is it, really, that intellectuals (who sometimes forget the rest of the world isn't on the same page with them, or even the same chapter), if we grant Kamiya's interpretation of Irwin's book, may have been taken "for a ride"? Is not the effect of wrong-thinking by the Western masses not far more important than what an elite group of academics think? We accept notions such as black holes as fact, now, but few of us have ever seen one and fewer still can explain nor even care what a black hole is. Most of us are still arguing over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. So, apparently are a good many intellectuals.
The fabric of western thought has been influenced more by Kipling and the rampant senile babble of descendents of British Colonials than it has by the dry, clinical assessments of a few Great Minds. What Edward Said did was to distill the damage down to its essence, and in that respect there is little disagreement between him and Irwin. It seems it is Kamiya who has the problem, who feels "taken for a ride" by Said, who did, in fact, pin the tail where it belonged, however broad a brush he may have used (to thoroughly mix my metaphors).
Another letter writer here said that Said dealt in "Big Ideas" and that those Big Ideas are what move things forward. They do, whether those "things" are so or not. In this case, it seems, they became what they beheld. The Western intellectual community may be still debating the way the case was stated, but the rest of the world simply continues to build on the notions Said put forth, and likely would have, with or without his analysis. That his notions have stood up so well for so long at least reflect the failure of the West at large to learn to think critically and broaden its world view. In that respect Said and Irwin end up in a draw, while the "real" world stumbles on into the mist. The blame for this lies largely with Western intellectuals who, like Western theologists, fail to share, in any meaningful way, the insights they gain from their studies and speculations with the ordinary men and women who actually shape events while intellectuals play with their theories.
-
I Had the Stone in My Raised Hand
[Read the article: Raising Cain]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]but I went on reading anyway, thank god.
This is the first time I have read something of Ms. Dickerson's and have come away feeling all the things I felt I had missed in the past. Clarity, honesty and most of all vulnerablility. Nothing was swathed in the word salad I have come to expect from past articles. This one was painfully, beautifully clear; And it shows me a woman coming to terms with being a woman, a black woman, and the peculiar and terrible responsibility of raising a black son.
I would only offer Ms. Dickerson one piece of advice: don't overthink this one. You clearly are "mommed out" in the best possible way. Concerned about your son realizing his own blackness? The world will take care of that. It will remind him daily of his unique challenge in that regard. He will come to the field equipped with what it requires to be a man - his blackness no more nor less than what it should be, and whether you "like" men or not. He won't be your father, he won't be just another black man. He will be your son. And your daughter will be your daughter, a woman among women, because you have given consideration to their respective roles in the world and taken nothing for granted.
Perhaps this is the "gift of poverty" I often refer to when I tell people my parents gave me that if nothing else. It made clear, for me, the Divine Feminine influence in everything around me.
I was ready for the worst and found, instead, light coming off the page. No, I'm sure that's what it was. Thank you. Carry on.