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12.04.00, 9:34 p.m.

Um, okay, hi. I drew these pictures on the site. Please do not do as Tony O. Champagne, staff artist for the Times-Picayune in New Orleans, did and use them in illustrations without my permission. One, I appreciate being notified of their use, and two, it's totally lame to just take 'em, use 'em for an article about weblogs and not even bother asking. Let alone not even mentioning or citing the source or URL anywhere. That's doubly rude. Jerks. (Thanks to the other Icky for sending the paper, though.)

 8:05 a.m.

To: "CULTSTUD-L: A listserv devoted to Cultural Studies"

Subject: Re: [cultstud-l] Globalization = shift in the permeability of  boundaries.

<<I'm suggesting that the impulse toward "globalization" was
energized when white persons began to break through the rigid structures of their own society, and that black persons were the first "other" that inspired them to do so.<<

I so did not want to get into this globalization discussion, but I do need to point out that the "defiance" of white individuals who (for instance) "go native" or otherwise seek to emulate/absorb/consume "the other" hardly constitutes a radical shift in uneven social relations, and sometimes reiterates them, global or not. (See Harvery Keitel's character in "The Piano.") And I don't think this phenomenon began with globalization nor that globalization is all that benign (i.e., in the "we are the world" sense). Moreover, I'd also argue that whiteness is incredibly agile and capable of absorbing all kinds of imagined "transgressions," and the quality of "inspiration" is most definitely up for debate (i.e., what's the line between inspiration and appropriation? how does it function within the context of historical and social relations?).

No coffee for me, but definitely a cold pill or two. Cough, cough....

Mimi Nguyen
Comparative Ethnic Studies
UC Berkeley