Comments on: Our Algeria

By: Kerim

Kerim — Sat, 18 Jun 2005 05:24:03 +0000

Although comparing Iraq to Vietnam is a popular pastime, I’ve seen much less discussion of the similarities to the Algerian war.

There was actually quite a lot of such discussion following the re-release of the film The Battle of Algiers.

By: orange.

orange. — Fri, 17 Jun 2005 21:55:34 +0000

Rex said,
” ..what we care enough about to study about is shaped by what is on our minds at the moment. But I believe that the fact that we choose our research topics based on our interests (…) means only that research and politics are connected, not identical.”

No one said they were identical. This indeed would be a silly claim for it is easy to show, they re not the same thing.

I´m glad you put aspects of western Islam reception into the dialog, because this is the background I began rethinking anthropology`s moral core (still questionmarked) in 2001.
To my own shame I admit, I still do not know much about Islam, the religion and Islam, the cultures
(if one agrees talking of it as cultures)–though I ve at least somewhat managed to get an idea of what I do not know until today.
What I do know something about is western reception of The Other. The discourses on The Other consist of discourses on the self and on the own culture, regarding the past (including western academia`s last 500 yrs), do you disagree?

By: des von bladet

des von bladet — Fri, 17 Jun 2005 17:27:29 +0000

Few in the Middle East have a clue about the nature, origins, or history of democracy, a word that has no history in the Arab vocabulary, or indeed any philological pedigree in any language other than Greek and Latin and their modern European offspring.

Your silly Engleesh isn’t one of “their modern European offspring”, of course, but I must say it’s a damn shame about Finland. A damn shame.

By: tigerbear

tigerbear — Fri, 17 Jun 2005 14:50:51 +0000

Gah! “pejorative”, comma after ‘project”‘.
[Get an opinion and I throw in the spelling/grammatical errors free of charge]

By: tigerbear

tigerbear — Fri, 17 Jun 2005 14:28:22 +0000

Scientistic objectivity? Could you define what you mean by this? What it seems to be is the standard prejorative, here used to invoke association with a group identity - rather desperately, I think, given the heretical notions of disabusing anthropology of notions such as a "moral core" or necessarily following from a "critical or destabilising project" with which it sits. (Though I'd note, which it is a side issue to, and doesn't build, or follow from the direct thrust of the argument).