Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Exhibit A.A Belated Analysis-y-Rant on Valentines Day
i'll skip the part about how its soooo commercial and suchhhhh a travesty of love and how you dont need a *day* to show your love and come right to localizing and contextualizing valentines day in post-colonial culturally-imperialized pakistan. we have all had the discussions about blindly copying the west and how disastrous that is for our culture and our youth blah blah blah. but exhibit A. seems to show that we arent just blindly copying anymore. you certainly wont find a blinged up version of the taj (actually its not exactly the taj but more of a mosque crossed with the taj - even more appropiate) mounted in a glass case with plastic roses and a big heart on valentinegifts.com (maybe ebay, ebay is insane). point is, we seem to be taking valentines day and adapting it to fit our unique cultural context. what then? if we adapt and amend dominant discourses to fit into our culture and traditions, has the subaltern begun to speak?
the trend doesnt stop at blinged up taj mahal-mosques, an article i read in a local magazine reported that at least in urban areas, there is a greater awareness of valentines day amongst people of lower socioeconomic status. they quouted the story of a young girl who works as a maid, she saved 200 rupees every month of the year so she could buy her boyfriend a great gift on valentines day and he did the same. another girl who worked in a beauty parlour had heard of valentines day from clients and because she didnt have a boyfriend, she and her siblings had saved up and planned to take their mother out for a nice dinner and a visit to the new park by the sea on valentines day. most people dont know the story of st. valentine, these people definately dont know it. they arent blindly imitating the west, they are, with very incomplete information, blindly imitating the westernized elite of pakistan (which in my book, is far worse). but, they are adapting the day to local norms and traditions which is better and more than the westernized elite does. so bring on the bling.
# posted by zalima @ 9:59 PM 
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Are you by any chance related to my dear dear friend, reknowned cultural anthropologist Dr. Preeto Khabisbilah? How about Dr. Channo Kohlapuri?
so like dudeman, i get your point but i like, totally, like disagree with it, like man. clearly i'm not at my eloquent best right now and it's highly unreasonable to expect me to formulate a coherent thought this late at night, but YAH man. you suck. nyaaaayayayaaaa! ;p
alright alright, i'll TRY. (geh)
for the sake of simplicity, let's not question categories like "western" and "eastern" and "authentic" and "culturally OURS" versus "culturally THEIRS" right now? pleeeeese? coz then this will become a post-modern nightmare and i really hate those.
so here's my thing - ultimately, when you take something that isn't culturally "yours" - WHETHER you ape it or happily cloak it in "nativity" - IT'S STILL NOT YOURS. it never will be no matter how much you try, because the context from which it arose in the first place has nothing to do with you. this is the argument i've heard some post-col indian feminists make about the english language. as in: yeah sure, we're the one percent that makes up the brown elite and our english is better than our urdu/hindi and that sucks, but ultimately, english is no longer the language of the white man and we've made it ours/owned it/"indianised" it etc. yah ok man, on one level, i agree. i revel in that shit. take the ever-skillful arundhati roy, for instance. i've heard people from s.india who've read GOST (my fav book, yay!) say that they can HEAR the malayalam in her text, it's that convincing. and she's a genius. if there's one living example of english being taken away from the white man, it's that book. and i love that, really i do. but at the end of it, i still can't shake the really simple, uncomplicated, un-theoryladen thought that we're still the sad fuckers who speak someone else's native tongue better than our own. it rocks that we've taken english away from the white man, but it would rock way harder if we spent some energy in actually educating ourselves in the urdu tradition rather than spending that same energy coming up with post-colonial theories to defend our shortcomings. in addition, we'd never find a britman/frenchman/turkman who spoke someone else's language better than their own.
anyway i'm beginning to ramble. i don't actually give two shits and a fuck about valentine's day, honestly i don't. people can celebrate it, people can ape it, people can "nativise" it, whatever. it's a really stupid mindless tradition and it's on those grounds that i wouldn't want to have anything to do with it. not because i'm hyper pakistani and see it as being an attack on our glorious muslim culture. whatever. i think the point you're making and the one i responded to was the larger picture.
yawn. ok my head is falling on the keyboard, so off i buugger.
slurpy kisses your way,
da j-mama
ps: i liked narnia. it was slow - but true to the book.
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alright alright, i'll TRY. (geh)
for the sake of simplicity, let's not question categories like "western" and "eastern" and "authentic" and "culturally OURS" versus "culturally THEIRS" right now? pleeeeese? coz then this will become a post-modern nightmare and i really hate those.
so here's my thing - ultimately, when you take something that isn't culturally "yours" - WHETHER you ape it or happily cloak it in "nativity" - IT'S STILL NOT YOURS. it never will be no matter how much you try, because the context from which it arose in the first place has nothing to do with you. this is the argument i've heard some post-col indian feminists make about the english language. as in: yeah sure, we're the one percent that makes up the brown elite and our english is better than our urdu/hindi and that sucks, but ultimately, english is no longer the language of the white man and we've made it ours/owned it/"indianised" it etc. yah ok man, on one level, i agree. i revel in that shit. take the ever-skillful arundhati roy, for instance. i've heard people from s.india who've read GOST (my fav book, yay!) say that they can HEAR the malayalam in her text, it's that convincing. and she's a genius. if there's one living example of english being taken away from the white man, it's that book. and i love that, really i do. but at the end of it, i still can't shake the really simple, uncomplicated, un-theoryladen thought that we're still the sad fuckers who speak someone else's native tongue better than our own. it rocks that we've taken english away from the white man, but it would rock way harder if we spent some energy in actually educating ourselves in the urdu tradition rather than spending that same energy coming up with post-colonial theories to defend our shortcomings. in addition, we'd never find a britman/frenchman/turkman who spoke someone else's language better than their own.
anyway i'm beginning to ramble. i don't actually give two shits and a fuck about valentine's day, honestly i don't. people can celebrate it, people can ape it, people can "nativise" it, whatever. it's a really stupid mindless tradition and it's on those grounds that i wouldn't want to have anything to do with it. not because i'm hyper pakistani and see it as being an attack on our glorious muslim culture. whatever. i think the point you're making and the one i responded to was the larger picture.
yawn. ok my head is falling on the keyboard, so off i buugger.
slurpy kisses your way,
da j-mama
ps: i liked narnia. it was slow - but true to the book.
# posted by 
: 11:52 AM
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