Dear all,
Since my name came up in Rakesh's last post I thought it would be appropriate to say a few words. Last week I reacted when Rakesh called Juriaan "empiricist" and other demeaning denotations, so I tried to engeage in a debate with him. Then he, for no reason really, called me the same thing. I therefore asked him to "act his age and position", because he wasn't making any sense, he was just being obnoxious. This obvisouly made hime furious, since he replied:
"Behave my age! That is just colonial racist infantalization. I am not
surprised."
I consider this post to be nothing but flaming which should in itself lead to a ban. However, son of a Russian immigrant woman, the words "colonial" and "racist" don't really affect me too much. Then again, I cannot really see either how the words "act your age and position" can be interpreted like that (considering that Rakesh is a senior scholar at an American University no?). Secondly, I have students and colleagues who I depend on, so having some American academian with too much spare time on my neck is straight up dangerous. His problem with "infantilization" I can understand, since that was my real point, but then the correct phrase would read:
Behave my age! That is just ... infantalization. I am not
surprised.
But that is not what he wrote...
Just to make things clear, I never cared for what any person's name is, or where they might come from. In these days it is impossible to tell anyhow. Most of my immigrant friends for example have very Swedish sounding names, that's because otherwise their chances to succeed in the labour market would be minimal. But your name can never be a go ahead to say obnoxious stuff.
Rakesh, it seems to me, is very careful to defend Marxist colleagues and takes attacks on some of them in a very personal way. I can respect that he defends a position, though not sharing his point of view (I am critical of some of them obviously but so what?). I try to remain humble, and argue in a disengaged fashion.
Many kind regards
Martin