In this statement, Fanon means that it would be of no use or advantage to a native community that is resistant to being altered or modernized. He compares this to building a railway through the woods or draining the swamp, both of which would be completely pointless. The process of draining a swamp cannot be completed. African underdevelopment can be attributed to the operation of the imperialist system, which plays a significant role in slowing African economies due to the draining of African riches, making rapid development difficult. According to Fanon, the natives have no value. To them, they can be moved or cleared with no impact on their lives or any other aspect for that matter. It can also be identified that the locals are considered as non-existent politically and economically. These means the people do not consider them as a civilization. The value of people in this case is measured by their political representation and economical ability. Due to them lacking these traits, they are considered as meaningless.
Question 10
Derrida refers to Thoth as Joker because Thoth extends or opposes by replacing or repeating. This is evident where Thoth the god of nonidentity later in distinguishing himself from the others, he becomes the sign and representative of his identity; he obeys it and also he conforms it. Thoth could replace it by violence if need be. He assumes the responsibility and identity of the father, his son and himself. Thoth was always taking a place that was not his own. All his acts were marked by this unstable ambivalence and indecisiveness. Thus Derrida calls him a joker.
Question 11
Socrates definition of rhetoric in Phaedrus is an art of enchanting the mind and soul with arguments and by means of words, which is practiced in courts, public assemblies, and private houses and companies having to do with all matters, great and small, good and bad, and all have equal rights and can be esteemed equally. Socrates thinks that what is wrong with the definition is that the sophistic rhetoric is not an art; rather it is an artless practice. He argues that a writer must know the truth about the subject of the speech. He also argues that the art of rhetoric is needed truth even by those who know the truth to persuade others to accept the truth. Socrates finds fault in the organization of Lysias's arguments. He claims that the arguments should be ordered like living organisms with all the different parts fitted together to make a coherent whole. Without some parts, the arguments cannot be full or rather whole. Socrates believes that rhetoric is essential in public speaking. He believes the leaders need to use rhetoric so that the masses can question themselves or the truth being said.
Question 12
When Derrida says the condition of truth is non-truth, he means that the structure which constitutes the effect of truth and the production and operation of truth is non-truth (paradoxically). Derrida illustrates that the appearance of truth should generate itself in its reflection. The truth must always come to terms with its own its relation to non-truth. This doubles as its negation- contradiction (non-truth is the truth) and tautology within the truth act. The field for mind play opens to no end (infinity). The non-truth is the condition of possibility of truth while non-presence is the condition of possibility of presence.
Question 13
Fanon who saw a triangular dialogue in colonialism with a permanent illusory confrontation that included the settler, the native and the native intellectual likened the self-justifying-ideological operations of the colonial era to a mother. Said described Orientalism as the distribution of geopolitical awareness into aesthetic, scholarly, economic, sociological, physiological and historical texts. Both Fanon and Said believe that the land was created by the settlers and history about the land will be made by them. They believe colonization brought about modernization in the African countries. The two believe that without the colonizers, the natives would still be uncivilized. Said for instance believes that the distribution of economic, sociological, and geopolitical awareness is the sole reason that the natives became modernized. Without these factors, they would still be living in their uncivilized societies. Fanon differs with Said in that Fanon does not have any equality the in the analysis of the last stages of the African colonialism and the coming of neo-colonialism. However, Said entails this analysis such as how he observes how terrorism had displaced communism as a public enemy. Said believes that communism is ineffective in developing the people. To him, communism is a way in which a community can continue to lag behind or rather be not modernized. He does not deny that the acts of terrorism takes place, rather he questions the way in which the discourse of terrorism is used to describe violent acts of resistance to imperial ownership rather than to address the violence of the imperial ownership itself. This gives his arguments a pro-violence among the locals. The main injustice in this case is the terrorism that the locals faced from the colonialist. However, Said does not concentrate on this injustice but looks at the manner in which the terrorism takes place.
Question 14
Hall starts from the construction of Englishness in the context of imperialism. He points to the contemporary stresses that national identity relates to Britain's failure to compete in the new global markets. When the era of nation-state globalization began to decline, Hall argued that one could see a regression to a defensive and very dangerous form of national identity, which was driven by a very aggressive form of racism. Later, Hall develops his arguments about the various challenges to the old identities which included the problems posed by Marx determined by economic structure), Saussure (language structures) and fraud (unconscious) before returning to the process of development of a new identity and the rediscovery of roots and identity drawing from the example of rediscovery of the black identity in response to the claims of racism in Britain, and the complex reality of individual's multiple identities. The old identity of British people according to Hall has been marred by their racism. They have rather focused on their nationalistic attitudes and failed to move with the rest of the world in terms of development. They fail to embrace the new ways of the world. Rather, they still cling on their old identity which cannot allow them to develop into the modern world.
