"political"

[Dan Goncharoff]

Isn't the justification of a specific public policy a political act? The
author was arguing that using " the activities of the hunters of the Ice
Age" as justification for war is political.

DanG


On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 12:27 PM, Jonathan Lighter
<wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      "political"
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> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Gee, I'm dense. After decades of exposure to Marxist, deconstructionist,
> structuralist, poststructuralist, and metastructuralist criticism, I still
> don't know what "political" means!  Can you beat it?
>
> Can someone interpret the meaning for me in the following sentence? I mean
> fairly authoritatively:
>
> "To use words from one culture to describe the activities of another is
> always a political act. It is an ethnocentric value judgment to impose the
> term 'war'  to describe the activities of the hunters of the Ice Age. The
> peoples of that time probably had no word for war and would be amazed at
> the concept."
>
> 'Self-serving'? 'Ethnocentrically self-serving'?  'Unjustifiable from a
> perspective of cultural relativism'?  'Etc.'?
>
> There seems to be an underlying nuance of "politics" present that isn't
> covered by OED either. But what exactly?
>
> Should we care?
>
> JL
>
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
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