Herero latest

[rich]

agreed. it's condescension in reverse to put whole peoples on pedestal of
purity. something the left has a big problem with, even now. Views of
Native Americans, in particular. Violence and cruelty is sadly a human
trait, across peoples, places, etc.
I think what Pynchon and others are getting at are the phoney stories of
American exceptionalism and cities on the hill nonsense that (at least from
an American POV) citizens tell themselves about the past.

rich

On Wed, May 17, 2017 at 10:49 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Very interesting - thanks! It's no criticism of Pynchon's "big picture"
> uses of colonialism, genocide, etc. to notice how gnarly and convoluted and
> political the moral aftermath gets in real time in real Namibia. Ditto for
> Israel and Palestinians, England and Ireland/Scotland, Russia and post-1990
> neighbors, US and Mexico or Puerto Rico or..., you name it. The simplest
> Oppressor-Victim narratives often obscure a lot of division, infighting and
> betrayal among the victims.
>
> Come to think of it, you could argue that P *does* open that angle of view
> in the debates among the Herero in Germany. And I'm certain there was
> deliberation behind Mason & Dixon's arrival at the ancient, well-worn
> Native American warpath... and Wren Provenance's discovery in AtD that
> *somebody* fiercer had driven the proto-Aztecs from an earlier homeland to
> the Valley of Mexico.
>
>
> On Wed, May 17, 2017 at 9:55 AM, e tb <eburns at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Salt in old wounds: What Germany owes Namibia | The Economist
>>
>>
>> http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/2172191
>> 8-saying-sorry-atrocities-century-ago-has-so-far-made-matters-worse-what
>>
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20170517/2e633ddd/attachment.html>