Counterfeit Heroes or Colourblind Visionaries: The Black Conservative Challenge to Affirmative Action in Modern America

The increasing prominence of black conservative voices within American intellectual discourse during the past quarter century has prompted scholarly scrutiny of their contributions to black social and political thought, and led to fierce debate about their role in the nation's rightward cultural shift. While their numbers have remained relatively small, the political impact of their presence has nonetheless been significant. Indeed, for much of the 1980s and 1990s, black conservative ideologues were ensconced at the heart of the national dialogue on 'race', tapping into the enduring American philosophies of individualism and free enterprise, seeking to overturn the corrective political initiatives secured by the great civil rights movement. Insisting that their differences were not with the goals of freedom, justice and equality, but with the methods employed to achieve them, black conservatives argued that the liberal policies associated with the 'Great Society' of the late 1960s had failed, that government, far from providing the solutions, was in fact exacerbating the problems faced by African American people. This article will assess the validity of these charges by focusing special attention on the black conservative critique of affirmative action in contemporary America. It seeks to bring together the various fragmentary 'micro' analyses of black conservatism offered by prominent liberal and radical scholars concerned with defending affirmative action, and to mould a coherent 'macro' response to the black conservative challenge. In so doing, it reflects more broadly on the political climate of the 1980s that made the emergence of black conservative intellectuals possible, and assesses the implications and practical consequences of their work for the majority of black people who continue to live what Malcolm X called the 'American Nightmare'

Reading: Michael Ondaatje

In this audiovisual recording from March 20, 1991 as part of the 22nd annual UND Writing Conference: “The Literatures of Canada,” Michael Ondaatje reads a selection of his work. Ondaatje reads the poems “Sweet Like a Crow,” “Translations of My Postcards,” “The Cinnamon Peeler,” “To a Sad Daughter,” “In A Yellow Room,” “Birchbark,” and prose excerpts from Running in the Family and In the Skin of a Lion

Chapitre V. Michael Ondaatje, Le patient anglais : l’effacement de la limite

Si le chronotope de la frontière est bien ce qui transparaît dans l’imaginaire du désert dans les carnets de route du xixe siècle, cette limite fictive, culturelle, imaginaire et idéologique qui sépare l’Occident de l’Orient, soi et l’autre, se déplace dans En attendant les barbares et se brouille dans un roman postmoderne et postcolonial tel que Le patient anglais. Dans le roman d’Ondaatje, le désert est évocation, interface floue entre réalité et fantasme comme le souligne le narrateur : « ..

The English Patient

The novel's historical backdrop is the North African/Italian Campaigns of World War II. The story is told out of sequence, moving back and forth between the severely burned "English" patient's memories from before his accident and current events at the bomb-damaged Villa San Girolamo (in Fiesole), an Italian monastery, where he is being cared for by Hana, a troubled young Canadian Army nurse. The English patient's only possession is a well-worn, and heavily annotated copy of Herodotus's The Histories that has survived the fiery parachute drop.[1] Hearing the book constantly being read aloud to him brings about detailed recollections of his desert explorations, yet he is unable to recall his own name. Instead, he chooses to believe the assumption by others that he is an Englishman based on the sound of his voice. The patient is in fact László de Almásy, a Hungarian Count and desert explorer, one of many members of a British cartography group. Caravaggio, an Italian-Canadian in the British foreign intelligence service since the late 1930s, befriended Hana's father before the latter died in the war. He learns that Hana is at the villa caring for a patient. He had remained in North Africa to spy when the German forces gain control and then transfers to Italy. He is eventually caught, interrogated, and tortured; they even cut off his thumbs.[2] Caravaggio bears physical and psychological scars from his painful war experience for which he seeks vengeance. Two British soldiers yell at Hana to stop her from playing a piano since the Germans often booby-trapped them. One of the soldiers, Kip, an Indian Sikh, a trained sapper, specializes in bomb and ordnance disposal. Kip decides to stay at the villa to attempt to clear it of unexploded ordnance. Kip and the English patient immediately become friends. The English patient, sedated by morphine, begins to reveal everything: he fell in love with the Englishwoman Katharine Clifton who, with her husband Geoffrey, accompanied Almásy's desert exploration team. Almásy was mesmerized by Katharine's voice as she read Herodotus' Histories out loud by the campfire.[3] They soon began a very intense affair, but she cut it short, claiming that Geoffrey would go mad if he were to discover them. Geoffrey offers to return Almásy to Cairo on his plane since the expedition will break camp with the coming of war. Almásy is unaware that Katharine is aboard the plane as it flies low over him and then crashes. Geoffrey is killed outright. Katharine is injured internally and Almásy leaves her in the Cave of Swimmers. Caravaggio tells Almásy that British Intelligence knew about the affair. Almásy makes a three-day trek to British-controlled El Taj for help. When he arrives, he is detained as a spy because of his name, despite telling them about Katharine's predicament. He later guides German spies across the desert to Cairo. Almásy retrieves Katharine's dead body from the Cave and, while flying back, the decrepit plane leaks oil onto him and both of them catch fire. He parachutes from the plane and is found severely burned by the Bedouin. The novel ends with Kip learning that the U.S. has bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He departs from Villa San Girolamo, estranged from his white companions