Misspoke myself, again

Steve Mizrach (SEEKER1@NERVM.NERDC.UFL.EDU)
Thu, 16 Jun 1994 00:45:50 -0400

>Mizrach said:
>
>> We still have to fight the naive variant of cultural evolutionism
>>which says that people who are pre-literate or pre-industrial are "savage,"
>>"primitive," or "inferior," e.g. need to have their cultures wiped out and
>>replaced by our own.
>> I would say the most difficult mission of anthropology is to teach
>>people cultural relativism.
>
>Forgive me, but am I missing something here? Isn't there something quaintly
>technocentric about such terminology as "pre-literate" or "pre-industrial"
>(cf. Sir Hubert Wanker in my signatire quote). Doesn't the "pre" imply
>exactly that which you would seem to wish to avoid?
>
>Pedantically yours,
>Maddog.

Maddog, you are both pedantically and politically correct, and I mean that
in a good way. I suppose I should use the term "non-literate" or
"non-industrial", to suggest that these people are not in a state prior to
literacy or industrialism, waiting for it to be given to them by Western
benevolence; but then I would not want to suggest, either, that they are
incapable of literacy or industrialization...
Hmm. How about "aliterate" and "aindustrial." It's sort of like the
difference between "immoral" and "amoral" - well, maybe. Anyway, maybe
you've got a better, more PC term.

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Seeker1 [@Nervm.Nerdc.Ufl.Edu] (real info available on request)
CyberAnthropologist, TechnoCulturalist, Guerilla Ontologist, Chaotician
Discordian Society, Counter-Illuminati Operations Branch
"The map is not the territory." -- Alfred Korzybski
"The menu is not the meal." -- Alan Watts