September 30, 2002
Pomo-Left anti-American sentiment abounds on
Pomo-Left anti-American sentiment abounds on the Web site of Duke University Press, now busily promoting the current issues of South Atlantic Quarterly ("Dissent from the Homeland: Essays After September 11") and Social Text ("September 11 -- A Public Emergency?"). Contributors to the first volume, the Web site proclaims, "provide a thought-provoking alternative to the apparently overwhelming public approval, both at home and abroad, of the U.S. military response to the September 11 attacks." Contributors to the second, including queer theory poster girl and Bad Writing Contest winner Judith Butler, "argue that the challenge for the Left is to develop an antiterrorism stance that acknowledges the legacy of U.S. trade and foreign policy as well as the diversity of the Muslim faith and the dangers presented by fundamentalism of all kinds." In other words, the Left needs an antiterrorism stance that blames America for the September 11 attacks; one that displays cultural sensitivity toward Allah-crazed Islamofascists; one that understands George W. Bush as an imperialist aggressor and patriotic Americans as his unenlightened, anti-intellectual accomplices. Virulently anti-capitalist and anti-Western at the best of times, Duke University Press is outdoing itself this week.
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