SPEAK FOR YOURSELF
Maybe it all depends on the vantage. David Rieff tells of a visit by the Argentine film maker Edgardo Cozarinsky, in the company of a Columbian, to the port of Palos, from which Columbus sailed. From there they stared west. Cozarinsky, a Jew from the pampas, said, “Here began our salvation.” But “he found himself fixed by a hard stare and a copper-hued grimace. ‘Here,’ the Columbian retorted acidly, ‘began our enslavement.'” Rieff quotes Walter Benjamin: “There is no document of civilization that is not at the same time a document of barbarism.” It all, or much of it, depends upon who is standing where when. Taken from Harper’s, used in Context, January 1, 1991, Volume 23, Number 1, Claretian Publications, 205 West Monroe Street, Chicago, IL, 60606
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