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Somethings never change

So today I brought up the problem of eurocentricism in postmodern thought in class, and perhaps didn't get my message across. But even if I didn't get my message across, maybe my opinion was read loud and clear.

Yes, I think we're still being colonized by language, and maybe it's about time we understood that european languages and Enlightenment philosophy don't contain the answer to everything. In fact, I believe that the answer to many problems we face with modernism would be properly dealt we were we to open our intellecutal economies to other modes of thoughts and paradigms. It is true that international relations is an extremely American discipline, in a very unAmerican world. What gives?

But it was weird having people come up to me after class to further debate my point on the ideology of Asianic languages. Perhaps it's because I am Asian, or maybe it's CHIN 300 & 310, or the fact that i'm a Thirdie, but I do believe that there is a sense of discontent that I am experiencing wrt to European ideology and paradigms. But I have to stress, I belong to no other.
Now before I start speaking Derridian, the point of this post was to bring up how uncomfortable I felt to have a perfect stranger (and evesdropper - which was cute) debate with me on something that I have been journeying with for sometime. I felt extremely self-concious and was struck by some sort of academic vanity. I felt that by being unable to express my thoughts concisely in class had made me to be some sort of intelleucal faux pas, I basically said that the west sucks and being AZN rocks. Or did I?

Whatever the case, I'm learning the art of difference. That agreement will not come easily, and perhaps it shouldn't. And I hold a valid view that is contingent (the clincher for pomo) on this particular point in my life journey. Screw image. if I've said something unPC in class and people hate me fore it, I shouldn't bow out and apologize, espcially if I am convicted.

If I do, how can I stand with the Word?

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And let me go on, and on, and on.

Back from the gym I met someone who sought to rehabiliate Stalin. After doing a paradigmatic double-take, it all clicked in my mind.

Of course.

And so we go on to chat about the horrors of history and the worlds it spawns and denies. I wonder what the word for killing a universe is, veruscide? But that's what happens everyday. In class.

But anyway, I think there is a need to rehabilitate individuals such as Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Saddam, (Christina Aguilara?) and the like. Not to rehabilitate their deeds or ideologies, but to understand them in the concext of their humanity. They are human. And if we forget, or deny, or reject them of that, we then decide to turn a blind eye to the image in the mirror, to the truth of who we are as a race. I understand that this is sensitive and there have been many who have been personally affected, hurt and even broken by these individuals, and what they have done is monstrous beyond expression. But to deny them of their humanity, is to dilute, and even ignore the weight of their experience.

For us to brand them monsters and less-then-human, shifts the blame away and deems their deeds as oddities, functions of freaks of nature. Hence victims of these people were but unfortunate souls who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Let the blame fall on humanity as a whole. Let us rehabilitate these People, give them humanity, recognise that they have beauty, that they laugh, feel, love, cry, and that they, as with us, are made in the image of God.

And now what do we do with with horror on our hands? It's ours. Ours to own and to reconcile with. Sure we didn't personally engineer the murder of millions, but we come from the same stock. We owe humanity an apology, and ought to come to the hard recognition that we are not good for ourselves. Like some momento mori, the memory of these people ought to sit on our backs and humble us. They should be telling of the evil that resides in all of us, and of our responsibility to the marginalized and sufferers in this world. Dehumanizing them abdicates us from this responsibility.

Ohm tat sat.