Word: naipaul
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Return of Eva Perén, V.S. Naipaul...
NONFICTION: Fatal Flowers, Rosemary Daniell ∙ Maybe, Lillian Hellman Philosophy and Public Policy, Sidney Hook ∙ The Last Nomad, Wilfred Thesiger ∙ The Return of Eva Peron, V.S. Naipaul ∙ Thirty Seconds, Michael J. Arlen ∙ Wilderness of Mirrors, David C. Martin
Using angry language to recruit support may be dangerous, as Naipaul shows; but there's a greater issue he never addresses. He won't allow the leaders their anti-imperialist rhetoric, but he doesn't offer them any other suggestions about how to bind their countries together. He wants them to write their histories "accurately," and then everything else would fall into place. But is the real Argentina European or South American? How far back in time must countries search for an identity...
...Naipaul offers only one answer: countries must not look back too far and turn precolonial times into "le bon vieux temps de nos ancestres." This is the solution of General Mobutu in Zaire, a senseless one. Mobutu combines tradition and technology in a way that belongs to neither culture: African dances performed in a television studio, African art relegated to a sculpture niche in the wall of Mobutu's residence. Mobutu's "African nihilism" promises the flashy cars and gold wristwatches of Western technology while attacking their source...
...leader cannot will an identity on a people by angry decree; this is Naipaul's message. It is important, but only one small part of a very large problem. There is no guarantee that if leaders clean up their rhetoric, that if developing nations write their histories with the same care they use to design industry, they will be better prepared to solve their problems. In elevating culture to a position of primacy, Naipaul sometimes forgets that developing a history is no substitute for developing an economy...