Talk:Reading log Bhabha, Wikan, Riley

Some comments related to the reading log

Catarinas reading log []as well as my own reading of Bhabha, Wikan and Riley awoke plenty of thoughts and questions concerning the themes discussed in the texts as well as the way they are being presented for the reader. In my commentary I will focus on certain points Catarina has highlighted in her text.

As the reading log presents it, the concept of culture is discussed in Wikan's text from a critical point of view. Wikan challenges a lot of (mis)conceptions we have about the word culture and its usage. One of the things that Catarina has lifted in her text is the fact that Wikan describes culture as "a new concept of race"; something that I'd never thought of before (or at least put into words), but that seems to be an argument I can accept when connected to the examples Wikan presents. It does, indeed, seem at times that using culture as an explaining factor has become a chance for expressing oneself in terms which some decades ago would have been regarded as racist. "Culture" as a concept only happens to have a higher validity in verbal usage. In problematizing culture I feel that Wikan throws in a challenge for the reader to reconceptualize one's own understanding of the word, but when doing that she also gives the reader new tools to continue crafting.

This problematization is somewhat visible even in Bhabha's text but to me, as to Catarina (my interpretation due to plenty of "as I understand it") not quite as obvious. As Catarina, I also paid attention to Bhabha's discussion about national cultures and the homogeneity and "purity" of them (as described in p. 7 and in the reading log). In my previous reading and research I have been fascinated by the entire idea of nationalism - what it means to people, how has it been created, what kind of functions does it serve or has served for different people in different times and so on. As Bhabha and many other writers (e.g. Thomas Hylland Eriksen, 1998) have concluded, nationalism is merely a social and political construction that a group of people have agreed on (and, as in many parts of the world, disagree on). Yet it continues to be the topic of discussion in "peaceful" Western societies as well as developing countries with millenia-long traditions challenged by other-constructed nation-building during colonialism and nations at war all over the world. Being dependent of some kind of national identity does at times seem highly unfashionable considering the postmodern society we live in, but it nevertheless plays an important role for the big majority of us.