roachboy

i have been watching this debate with some interest as it has unfolded and chose to stay out of it...but i am increasingly perplexed by your position, cyn.

1. in an earlier post you talked about the importance of having lived in singapore in shaping your perception of how different groups might or might not interact and your relation to groups you understand as being outside your own...i am not sure i follow...i have lived in france for a few years off and on, and i found that after a certain period of learning the space a bit, i was perfectly able to pass judgements on particular political moves--racism directed against north africans in particular, muslims in general--the politics of the front national, which is to a significant extent about affirming and normalizing that racism. the front national foregrounds the claim that its reaction to islam in general is routed through a defense of a "pure"--that is catholic--france.
now because i lived in france for 5 years or so, i cannot pretend that i know the place. but i do not see how anyone can or should require perfect knowledge of a situation before passing judgement on it. it seems an unreasonable position to me.
i see no problem at all with coming to understand particular political lines and opposing them. not having complete knowledge is a given--you never have complete knowledge. you make arguments. those arguments are more or less compelling. if you waited around for perfect knowledge, neither you nor anyone else would ever be able to say anything about phenomena that are not immediate.

in my day gig as historian i long ago learned that perfect knowledge is an illusion--you wont get it, you cant get it, it doesnt exist. it seems to me that your position would make writing history impossible.

beyond that, there is a disconnect between my experience and yours--am curious about why you understand your singapore stay as paradigmatic in that is appears to shape your relation to many phenomena that are not in singapore.

2. i also wonder about the claim that you relayed this argument to friends who happen to be gay--did you understand this as consulting native informants? do you therefore understand "gay culture" (a strange term) as totally seperate from yourself? are you in a kind of anthropologist relation to your friends, then?


this is important because it seems that your view of tolerance is predicated on the assumption that groups formed around identity signifiers are wholly seperate one from the other, and that you, because you identify on different grounds, are in turn wholly seperate from them. i find this strange but wonder if it is an accurate representation of your views.

aside: i took from your post the implication that your friends, who you do not name and who are not speaking for themselves, are somehow or another "more gay" than martin guerre--you generate this impression because you seem to use your friends and your consultation with them as a kind of trump card here. did you mean that?

i guess these are more questions than anything else, so will stop with this for now.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite