Regardless of theoretical confusions; when you see something like gays banding together for gay marriage to be a thing, people advocating for and setting up needle exchanges in drug infused areas, the end of apartheid, setting up free evening classes in impoverished areas, the entry of all races into most parts of the workforce; would you agree these changes are in part attributable to 'identity politics' in the broad sense? — fdrake
A Jamaican Negro of unmixed stock, stock, squat, stocky, fat and sleek, with protruding jaws, and heavy jowls, small bright pig-like eyes and rather bull-dog-like face. Boastful, egotistic, tyrannical, intolerant, cunning, shifty, smooth and suave, avaricious; as adroit as a fencer in changing front, as adept as a cuttle-fish in beclouding an issue he cannot meet, prolix to the 'nth degree in devising new schemes to gain the money of poor ignorant Negroes; gifted at self-advertisement, without shame in self-laudation, promising ever, but never fulfilling, without regard for veracity, a lover of pomp and tawdry finery and garish display, a bully with his own folk but servile in the presence of the [Ku Klux] Klan, a sheer opportunist and a demagogic charlatan.
On the level of a society, certain groups will probably have more advantages afforded to them; sometimes this is ok (like citizens), sometimes it's not ok (like citizens being unable to vote), sometimes there's a lot of ambiguity and horrible shit (treatment of asylum seekers). — fdrake
If we take Marxism, the "inherent exploitation" only goes insofar as the social context of capital is exploitative. — TheWillowOfDarkness
Conflating a civil rights movement with Marxism is a very old trick and oft repeated to this day. — fdrake
But I respect that you're trying to "clean house." However, I fear that you're the exact kind of hopelessly idealistic "useful idiot" who would be first up against the wall, come the revolution ;)
It's more often a rhetorical strategy to delegitimise a movement. — fdrake
So which examples of identity politics do you think of as irredeemable rubbish and why, then? — fdrake
Anything modeled on the Marxist type of societal analysis (of oppressor/oppressed groups, with the groups marked by their closeness to, or distance from, "power", arbitrarily defined). So: anything based on good, old-fashioned Marxism; anything based on analyses derived from Critical Theory, or any other blend of Freudianism and Marxism; anything based on Feminist analyses, or derived therefreom as a template; anything grounded philosophically in Post-modernism or Post-structuralism; anything based on Intersectionality and/or Standpoint Theory. — gurugeorge
I'm not one who says that literally everything that's ever come from any of these schools of thought is crap. — gurugeorge
How would you tell the difference between that and an actual wolf in sheep's clothing? Or don't the people in your tribe do that kind of thing? Always the good guys, huh?
It's always a bit tricky dealing with someone who has a measured position that I could probably agree with on some points, but who reflexively stands by the "no enemies to the Left" trope.
I'm not one who says that literally everything that's ever come from any of these schools of thought is crap. I understand very well that some things (like Postmodernism) are, or at least see themselves, as evolutions from previous stances, and as part of a continuing tradition, and I think the leading lights (e.g. Derrida, Foucault) have indeed had interesting things to say. It just doesn't translate very well into either (from a critical Left-wing point of view) activism or (from a critical Right-wing point of view) public policy.
All of this is rubbish: — fdrake
If any of these ideas are crap, I want them to be shown to be crap, you aren't doing that. — fdrake
shut up and listen for a bit if you're unfamiliar with the terms of discussion — fdrake
There is no circularity. The a priori definitions in question aren't the basis for "proving" what is true. They are the basic understanding of the definition of relationships of status and power which we need recognise if we are able to observe when they are occurring in our society. — TheWillowOfDarkness
So in Marxism for example, I need to understand what constitutes an oppressive relationship, an organisation and control of capital, how is amounts to exploitation, before I can even observe instances where it occurs in the world. — TheWillowOfDarkness
n fact it's the other way round from what you say: Marxism is a plain old possible explanation for verifiable, noticeable bad things happening, not an identification of bad things happening that nobody ever noticed before. Very good: but what's the test? In what way could it be a wrong possible explanation? — gurugeorge
If you want to dig deeper at a theoretical level, the problem is social constructionism, of the kind that goes back to Rousseau. The fact that our ideas come from our side, or subjectively (as a Kantian might say) as opposed to being directly perceived in the traditional Realist sense, doesn't mean they can't be objective. We bring the tests to the table, we project possible ways of being, sure: but Nature answers yea or nay.
The problem isn't with the schools of thought in terms of their ideas necessarily - ideas are ideas, you can consider them or not - rather the flaw is in the tic, the automatism, of seeing everything through the lens of "oppressor/oppressed" group analysis. It's the unexamined (un-criticized) water in which the fish of academia swim, and it's polluted.
The problem isn't with the schools of thought in terms of their ideas necessarily - ideas are ideas, you can consider them or not - rather the flaw is in the tic, the automatism, of seeing everything through the lens of "oppressor/oppressed" group analysis. It's the unexamined (un-criticized) water in which the fish of academia swim, and it's polluted.
I thought I did up-thread somewhere, then we went around the houses: I want to see real, verifiable instances of oppression to fight against, I'm not interested in apriori ideological candy floss designed to kafkatrap political opponents.
Plus also the obfuscatory language - if you need your man Roderick to simplify it, something's gone terribly wrong. Nobody needs to simplify Hume ;) But even that wouldn't be so bad on its own - idiosyncratic language use is kind of charming in the greats, it's like a musical jingle - but when it's garbled third hand and fourth hand in academia so that sons and daughters of the Great & Good can get a high paying job sucking the life out of society by working in an NGO or the Stasi HR department of a big law firm - then you've got trouble.
So social constructionism - what's the motive behind that? Well, in the context of a secular version of Protestantism, with its notion of the equality of souls before God, the general idea is that Man is born innocent (with everyone equal) but corrupted by social structures (particularly property). If you want the real root of the poison, that's it right there, in that Rousseaian idea (or rather the idea that Rousseau made immensely popular).
Pankaj Mishra wrote a unique article in the New York Review of Book yesterday, — Maw
How is it a hit-piece? — Maw
national myth, religious stories, and symbolic archetypes — Maw
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