Go Forth

Went to this great lecture yesterday on "Post-colonial Islam and Ironic Citizenship" by Salman Sayyid, author of A Fundamental Fear and research fellow in sociology and anthropology at the University of Leeds. He put our understanding of community in the context of the narrative that surrounds us...

Our narrative, he says, is the continuity from Plato to Nato with a tiny blip in there for the muslim empire, whose only purpose was as 'mail carriers' to deliver the ancient Greek thinking back in the hands of Western Europe before the Renaissance.
Western culture, in this narrative, is contrasted with the colonial culture: lawlessness against violence, democracy against tyranny, progressive and modern against traditional. Our thinking is so based on the notion of nation-states, and our idea of citizenship is so based on integration within the narrative, that we struggle to include people outside the narrative (Jews, Muslims, Roma) in our definition of citizen.

The narrative defines our presentation and interpretation, especially in the media, which in turn reinforces the narrative.

An article in Macleans lights the old Darwinistic spark around fertility rates... We decadent Westerners with a declining fertility rate, the vibrant and fertile Muslims multiplying and being fruitful. Are we sure we are not, yet again, ascribing a fearfully high sex drive to the barbarians assuming Modernity will suffer defeat because of self restraint?
Maybe Edward Gibbon's narrative "Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire" and Darwin's narrative have become our truth?

And I wonder, since it is the narrative that defines who we relate to in terms of community, how we can rewrite a myth that is so institutionalized...
Not just on the topic of muslims. But on the topic of so many items. Progress. Women. Religion. Our non-human fellow occupants of this planet. And yes. The lowly cockroach.

Talking about cockroaches... interesting discussion on CBC last week about the use of animals to describe a female -- womanwords. The signifier, having been assigned negative qualities, being used to confine and colour our perception of female behaviour. Vixen. Cow. Bird. Bitch. Dog. Chick. Shrew. Cat.

So. In my next life as in this. I want to be sexy, smart, sleek, cuddly, smooth and wild. I wonder what animal that is.