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I've been reading (skimming, really) Native Anthropology by Takami Kuwayama. Kuwayama has a message for Western anthropologists: "My message to the anthropologists of the cneter, in the United States, Greak Britain, and France, is a plea to realize, first, that their overwhelming power has created relations of domination and subordination in anthropological practice; and, second, that beause of their dominant position they have, intentionally or not, suppressed the voices from the margins." He also has a message for marginalized group: "To peripheral anthropologists in Asia and other regions, my message is about the danger of becoming nationalistic or even chauvinistic and of dogmatically ejecting everything Western (i.e., the central discourse) in their desire to be intellectually independent."

Western anthropologists in the past created the divide by constructing locals as 'natives', objects of study. Contemporary Western anthropologists maintain it by ignoring the anthropological work done by the 'natives' themselves.But 'native anthropologists' deepen the divide: b y rejecting the central discourse, they make it even more difficult for dialog to occur. But to participate, Kuwayama suggests that they must familiarize themselves with the master's tools.

This interests me particularly as a netizen, blogger, and member of the fen who would like to do scholarship about online communities and what is produced online.

I think there are rough parallels between the situation Kuwayama describes and Binh's linguistic experiences in Vietnam and in France. Westerners in Vietnam don't bother to learn much Vietnamese. The Vietnamese know only what they need to know. There is no discourse between these two grops, because there is no shared language, literally. But what would the reaction have been if Binh had attempted to learn French fluently, or to learn English? To discourse with Westerners as an equal? It's not just language, it's race and class, signified by language. Sometimes you're not permitted to use the master's tools. Binh is given barely enough access to the language he needs in order to serve Westerners; to take orders, really.

What does any of this have to do with feminism? The funny thing about the male/female dichotomy is that the two halves share each other's lives. Woman's place is not often physically separate from man's place. The women in the parlor drinking tea are very near the men in the dining room drinking liquor. Needless to say, they speak the same language. Whereas only a few 'natives' share the lives of 'imperials'. While I define 'feminism' quite broadly, The Book of Salt seems to have much more to do with race and language and nationality and colonialism than with gender and sexuality, which is the center of feminism. Race, class, nationality, etc. must be taken into account by feminists, but I think that gender and sexuality is the starting point and the point of unification for the various strands of feminism.

But Book of Salt is told from the POV of a man who has sex with other men, who serves two women who are in a queer relationship. There must be some angle.

And I can't think of one right now; maybe it would help if I finished the book first ...

And I find that analyzing taste is very difficult, even more difficult than describing a taste. Usually, I analyze words, thoughts, relationships, images.

I can't think of anything else right now. I keep running into walls.