> There seems to be a decent selection of works reckoning with American slavery, which is good, but if I recall and AFAICT not much about European colonialism, the Holocaust, CIA-backed coups in South America, the horrors of Stalinism, rising Asian powers, the postmodern condition, any post-sexual revolution gender politics
Not much about Japanese horrors in WWII, Chinese imperialism, Mongol raids, African-originated slave traders, African tribal genocides, machismo anti-homosexual Latino culture either.
Just seems you forgot to mention these for some reason. Maybe because the culmination of 3000 years of Asian, Africa, and South American history isn't utopia either?
I think the read that you and some others are getting out of my post is that "the Western tradition is bad", which wasn't the intention - I repeatedly praised the works, after all! And to be fair there's lots of outspoken, stupid voices in the so-called culture wars that do say things like that, so I see why you might've made the assumption.
The point I was trying to make is that - contra to many prevailing modernist attitudes at the time - is that the Western tradition alone won't lead us to utopia, shield us from atrocities, make us enlightened and peaceful, bring us to The Blissful End of History. This is not to say that the Western tradition is bad; it's to say that it's still a work-in-progress, a thing to be interrogated and questioned, something we can look outside of; not a calcified list of hundreds-of-years-old Great Works which, upon reading, will automatically confer greatness.
Not much about Japanese horrors in WWII, Chinese imperialism, Mongol raids, African-originated slave traders, African tribal genocides, machismo anti-homosexual Latino culture either.
Just seems you forgot to mention these for some reason. Maybe because the culmination of 3000 years of Asian, Africa, and South American history isn't utopia either?