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i have a bunch of friends who are specialists in chinese history. we talk about stuff when we see each other. when it comes to speaking about china, it turns out that i impose grid after grid from other histories. and they tell me that is what i am doing. but it's not like china is wholly Other. it's simple specific in the way everyplace, really, is specific. the situation is either the superficialities that one has operate or they dont, they describe something or they dont. and i simply dont know enough about the history or the system to be able to say much. what i know is that the relation between the party and local economies has never been linear exactly. what i know is that like in any situation really, when you think about it, reality is in the concrete, in the specific and/or particular. it's just that, for me anyway, as a function of my background, i get pushed onto what that means directly when it comes to china. it's not that i have no judgments. its just that i know the shallowness of the information they're based on.
there's no exoticism in this btw. it's simply a history that i dont really know.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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