Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Divison of Labour pages 39-40

If we say feminism has to struggle against all capitalist-patriarchal relations, we have to extend our analysis to the system of accumulation on a world scale, the world market or the international division of labour. The cleavages created by this division pose particular conceptual problems. What terminology should we use when we refer to the two divided, yet hierarchically related, sides of the world market? Should we continue to talk of 'developed' and 'underdeveloped' countries? Or, should we, in order to avoid the notion of a linear process of development, talk of 'First' and 'Third' world countries? Or should we use the concepts 'metropoles' or 'centres' and 'peripheries', stemming from the theoreticians of the dependency school? Behind each pair of concepts stands a whole theory which tries to come to grips with the historical phenomenon that, since the rise of Europe and later the USA as the dominant centres of the capitalist world economy, a process of polarization and division has been taking place by which one pole--the Western industrialized world--is getting richer and ever more powerful, and the other pole--the colonized countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America--are getting poorer and less powerful.

If we follow the feminist principle of transcending the divisions create by capitalist patriarchy in order to be able to establish that these divisions constitute only parts of the whole, we cannot treat the 'First' and 'Third' world as separate entities, but have to identify the relations that exist between the two.

These relations are based on exploitation and oppression, as is the case with the man-woman relation. And similar to the latter, these relations are also dynamic ones in which a process of polarization takes place: one pole is getting 'developed' at the expense of the other pole, which in this process is getting 'underdeveloped'. 'Underdevelopment', according to this theory, which was first developed by André Gunder Frank, is the direct result of an exploitative unequal or dependent relationship between the core-countries in the capitalist world economy, and their colonies. It is not due to some inexplicable 'backwardness'. In this dynamic process of polarization between countries which are 'developing' themselves and countries which they in this process 'underdevelop', the rich and powerful Western industrial countries are getting more and more 'overdeveloped'. This means their development does not stop at a certain point where people would say: 'This is enough. We have enough development for our human happiness.' The very motor driving on this polarization of the world economy, namely, the capitalist accumulation process, is based on a world view which never says 'This is enough'. It is by its very nature based on limitless growth, on limitless expansion of productive forces, of commodities and capital. The result of this never-ending growth model are the phenomena of 'overdevelopment', that is, of a growth that has assumed the character of cancer, which is progressively destructive, not only for those who are exploited in this process but also for those who are apparently the beneficiaries of this exploitation. 'Overdevelopment and underdevelopment' are, therefore, the two extreme poles of an inherently exploitative world order, divided up and yet linked by the global accumulation process or the world market.

To use the concepts 'overdevelopment-underdevelopment' in this sense may, therefore, help to avoid the illusion that in a world system, structured along these principles, the problems of the underdeveloped peoples could be solved by development 'aid', or that the overdeveloped peoples could achieve human happiness by further exploiting the underdeveloped world. In a finite world an exploitative and oppressive relation between the two sides of the whole will necessarily be destructive for both sides. At the present stage of history this truth begins gradually to dawn also on people in the overdeveloped world.

James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State page 332

It is worth emphasizing the degree to which oral cultures, as opposed to written cultures, may avoid the rigidity of orthodoxy. Because an oral culture has no textual reference point for marking deviations, traditions currently in circulation vary with the speaker, the audience, and local needs. Having no yardstick like a sacred text to measure the degree of drift from its Ur-tradition, such a culture can change greatly over time and simultaneously think of itself as remaining faithful to tradition.

Robert Musil, The Confusions of Young Törless page 72

It struck him that he had once, standing with his father before one of those landscapes, cried out unexpectedly, "Oh, how beautiful that is" -- and had been embarrassed by his father's pleasure. On that occasion he might just as easily have said: "How terribly sad it is." It was a failure of words that tormented him then, a half-awareness that the words were merely random excuses for what he had felt.

And today he remembered the picture, he remembered the words, and he clearly recalled lying about that feeling even though he did not know why. His eye ran through everything again in his memory. But it returned unassuaged, again and again. A smile of delight at the wealth of ideas that he still clutched as though distractedly, slowly assumed a barely perceptible, painful trait...

He felt the need to persist in his search for a bridge, a context, a comparison -- between himself and that which stood silently before his mind.

But however often he had calmed himself with a thought, that incomprehensible objection remained: you're lying. It was as though he had to pass through an unstoppable division of soldiers, a stubborn remnant forever leaping out at him, or as though he was wearing his feverish fingers raw trying to undo an endless knot.

And finally he gave up. The room closed in around him, and his memories burgeoned in unnatural distortions.