Reducing the analysis to race (which is usually what is focused on by identitarians) discounts at least the economic or class distinction, and so the analysis is grossly wanting. — rlclauer
a state of Eden a la Un — StreetlightX
his strikes me as at odds with your expression that violence is impotence, that power brings about circumstances where people do as you will and violence is the band-aid upon a failure of power. — Moliere
But why? — StreetlightX
Violence would not be impotent, from a theoretical standpoint. It would just be another form of power - unless there was some relationship to a different, potent form a power that spells out its impotence. — Moliere
And if that be the case then we could say that a symbiotic relationship could form between grades of power in particular, historical cases -- and a description would depend on the historical facts as well as the interpretation of the historian. — Moliere
To bring this around to the beginning -- if we can form relationships between instances of power, then it becomes even easier to understand the formulation that all politics are identity politics -- the relationship gives us a sort of interpretive rule between instances of power (violence : race : identity : distribution). — Moliere
First, I agree with the sense of political powerlessness. Secondly, darn it but stifling talk about how things could improve is the biggest means of creating hopelessness in people. Not knowing what ideals to aspire toward is like being a chicken running around without a head that nevertheless wants to get somewhere meaningful. And there's no way to find and then agree upon these ideals if individuals don't talk to each other about them. The more people start talking about politics in big picture terms, the more empowered they become by comparison to not so talking about politics. And in light of things such as global warming, I'd welcome more big picture political talk. — javra
Chomsky, Banksy, Amy Goodman, and if you like professional comedians, Bill Hicks. I've got a few others on my mind, but why wouldn't any of these suffice? (Or was the mold-breaking you referred to that of not engaging in extra-scholastic efforts while still effecting change?) — javra
Could you unpack it? — StreetlightX
It's not the loss of identity-centric politics that worries me but the carrying over of the same conceptual doubling of the world. A stately and magisterial double, with the spice of paradox to enliven things. — csalisbury
What wouldn't you say this about, short of "I burned down my local bank yesterday"? — StreetlightX
I'm not trying to talk to you. — StreetlightX
Let's take distributive power. We can divide the world up into income brackets, say, and look at what these people care about or what their life spans are or how many of them are in jail or some such. But then we can also do the same with identity -- and even, on the basis of said identity, point to distribution as a mechanism for discriminating against certain identities. — Moliere
Chomsky is an exemplary air-conditioned modeler. Banksy is an aesthete, and made shrewd use of an anti-corporate aesthetic that gibed with the radiohead-era zeitgeist. Now he does gallery shows and stunts at Sothebys. I don't know Amy Goodman and will look her up. — csalisbury
The important point to make though, is that none of this means that either woman nor gays do not have political claims specific to them. It only means that they must be articulated in terms of addressing concrete problems and specific injustices faced by each. — StreetlightX
In the US, black churches played a significant role in the Civil Rights Movement. That was true identity politics. — frank
No it was not, not in the slightest. It's in the name: civil rights. — StreetlightX
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