When students at Manchester University erased a famous poem by Rudyard Kipling and substituted an almost equally famous one by Maya Angelou, what did their action signify? They stated publicly that it was about colonialism. This critical account confirms their reading, but situates it among a set of supplementary oppositions: ease and difficulty, childhood and maturity, power and subordination. It argues that the readily available positions in the argument – literary value, anti-racist principle – are too rigid to do justice to the historical complexity of the dialogue which the action set up. What gives us access to the opposing ideologies, not as inert orthodoxies but as lived cultures, is the poetry in use.

中文翻译：

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“如果——”不是：使用的诗歌

当曼彻斯特大学的学生删除了 Rudyard Kipling 的一首著名诗并代之以 Maya Angelou 几乎同样著名的一首时，他们的行为意味着什么？他们公开表示这是关于殖民主义的。这个批判性的叙述证实了他们的阅读，但将其置于一组补充对立之中：轻松与困难、童年与成熟、权力与从属。它认为，论证中现成的立场——文学价值、反种族主义原则——过于僵化，无法公正地对待行动所建立的对话的历史复杂性。使我们能够接触到对立的意识形态，而不是作为惰性的正统观念，而是作为活生生的文化，是正在使用的诗歌。