Wednesday, July 14, 2004
Sunday, June 27, 2004
Identity politics needs to die. It is not that identities don't matter because, obviously, they do. Much of who I am is informed by being black, lesbian, queer-identified and from the middle-class. But that's not the entirety of my identity nor should it be taken as such.
What is more, none of that actually provides reliable information about my politics or philosophy. I am a pretty strict naturalist and a philosophical neo-Darwinian. Where is there room for that under the headings 'black', 'lesbian', 'queer-identified'? Nothing about neo-Darwinism requires shedding any of those identities and nothing in those identities should preclude those positions. Yet, it is assumed, (and in this context I am talking about people who would swear on a stack of Adrienne Rich's poetry that they are not racist, sexist or classist) that because of those identities I would never actually hold those positions and if I do, I must be labouring under some form or another of internalized oppression. Now, it would be simple (and simplistic) to claim racism or sexism or heterosexism as the cause for this but that goes nowhere quickly--at least in the critique that is being developed here. The problem is the idea that there is a 'black' way or a 'queer' way or a 'feminist' way of thinking about issues and although there is some (very) limited truth to at least the last of those assertions, it shouldn't be taken as prima facie true that if one is black, queer and feminist then one will necessarily hold a particular position. There is no prior commitment that comes from being born with black skin or being a feminist woman or being a queer feminist black woman.
It is assumed, however, that such a prior commitment does exist. What is worse, in terms of actual feminist and progressive intellectual movement, is that such assumptions then mean that any disagreement is not one of equally committed people of comparable goodwill with a difference of honest opinion. Rather, the issue then becomes that one's commitment to X cause is not strong enough or one has a 'false consciousness'. What inevitably happens is that free-thinkers will then abandon the movement, whatever that happens to be, when they find it stifling and the movement loses what could be creative and passionate intellectuals. In some instances, and here I am thinking of the neoconservatives, they run screaming into the arms of the opposition if the opposition is willing to at least speak the language of intellectual freedom. (The neoconservatives have now become that which they were initially running from at the tail end of the sixties, whether or not they have woken up to that fact yet. But the fact remains that many, though clearly not all, of the prominent neoconservatives were at one point ideological leftists or Marxists who grew disenchanted at some point.)
The Left needs to remember that there is the possibility that people of goodwill can disagree on matters of policy or interpretation without losing their commitment to 'the cause'. Additionally, we on the Left need to recognize that we have now theorized ourselves into a corner. By that I mean that we have made it almost impossible for new information to get pass the ideological police. If we auto-magically consider someone conservative who suggests that, for instance, science isn't a plot against women and people of colour or that perhaps, the idea of a solid liberal education (in the legacy sense of that term) is worthwhile or that meritocracy is a goal worth striving for as a society then we are incapable of discussion on the Left.
One of the hidden problems of this is that we also make ourselves incapable of honest critique of another's work. Too often, lesbian fiction, just to take one particular instance, is horrendously bad almost unreadable. And the reader who wants something truly soul-stirring or mind-expanding may be left wondering 'who on Earth let this get published?' which then can spark guilty feelings so we read it anyway, struggling through something like children eating brussel sprouts. But why should we have to put up with this. Where are our Radcliff Halls and Gertrude Steins of our day?
I asked my partner the other day if she could name one top-shelf lesbian intellectual and she responded 'Marilyn Fry'. We both then recognized that Fry is sixty years old and that neither of us could think of a single lesbian intellectual under the age of 50 who actually deserves the title of intellectual. Either the focus is altogether too narrow (if the only thing you write about is directly queer-focused material then you may be a queer theorist but I would have a hard time labeling myself an intellectual in the Jaques Barzun, Noam Chomsky sense) or the theory is really just polemic put upon a pedestal. Neither particularly helps progressive movements.
What is more, none of that actually provides reliable information about my politics or philosophy. I am a pretty strict naturalist and a philosophical neo-Darwinian. Where is there room for that under the headings 'black', 'lesbian', 'queer-identified'? Nothing about neo-Darwinism requires shedding any of those identities and nothing in those identities should preclude those positions. Yet, it is assumed, (and in this context I am talking about people who would swear on a stack of Adrienne Rich's poetry that they are not racist, sexist or classist) that because of those identities I would never actually hold those positions and if I do, I must be labouring under some form or another of internalized oppression. Now, it would be simple (and simplistic) to claim racism or sexism or heterosexism as the cause for this but that goes nowhere quickly--at least in the critique that is being developed here. The problem is the idea that there is a 'black' way or a 'queer' way or a 'feminist' way of thinking about issues and although there is some (very) limited truth to at least the last of those assertions, it shouldn't be taken as prima facie true that if one is black, queer and feminist then one will necessarily hold a particular position. There is no prior commitment that comes from being born with black skin or being a feminist woman or being a queer feminist black woman.
It is assumed, however, that such a prior commitment does exist. What is worse, in terms of actual feminist and progressive intellectual movement, is that such assumptions then mean that any disagreement is not one of equally committed people of comparable goodwill with a difference of honest opinion. Rather, the issue then becomes that one's commitment to X cause is not strong enough or one has a 'false consciousness'. What inevitably happens is that free-thinkers will then abandon the movement, whatever that happens to be, when they find it stifling and the movement loses what could be creative and passionate intellectuals. In some instances, and here I am thinking of the neoconservatives, they run screaming into the arms of the opposition if the opposition is willing to at least speak the language of intellectual freedom. (The neoconservatives have now become that which they were initially running from at the tail end of the sixties, whether or not they have woken up to that fact yet. But the fact remains that many, though clearly not all, of the prominent neoconservatives were at one point ideological leftists or Marxists who grew disenchanted at some point.)
The Left needs to remember that there is the possibility that people of goodwill can disagree on matters of policy or interpretation without losing their commitment to 'the cause'. Additionally, we on the Left need to recognize that we have now theorized ourselves into a corner. By that I mean that we have made it almost impossible for new information to get pass the ideological police. If we auto-magically consider someone conservative who suggests that, for instance, science isn't a plot against women and people of colour or that perhaps, the idea of a solid liberal education (in the legacy sense of that term) is worthwhile or that meritocracy is a goal worth striving for as a society then we are incapable of discussion on the Left.
One of the hidden problems of this is that we also make ourselves incapable of honest critique of another's work. Too often, lesbian fiction, just to take one particular instance, is horrendously bad almost unreadable. And the reader who wants something truly soul-stirring or mind-expanding may be left wondering 'who on Earth let this get published?' which then can spark guilty feelings so we read it anyway, struggling through something like children eating brussel sprouts. But why should we have to put up with this. Where are our Radcliff Halls and Gertrude Steins of our day?
I asked my partner the other day if she could name one top-shelf lesbian intellectual and she responded 'Marilyn Fry'. We both then recognized that Fry is sixty years old and that neither of us could think of a single lesbian intellectual under the age of 50 who actually deserves the title of intellectual. Either the focus is altogether too narrow (if the only thing you write about is directly queer-focused material then you may be a queer theorist but I would have a hard time labeling myself an intellectual in the Jaques Barzun, Noam Chomsky sense) or the theory is really just polemic put upon a pedestal. Neither particularly helps progressive movements.
It pains me to say this, but I am a disaffected leftist-progressive. "Back in the day", and by this I mean the late-eighties to the mid-nineties, I was a dedicated and passionate queer-feminist activist. I believed that every action I participated in, every column and article I wrote was smashing the patriarchy. Heterosexism, racism, sexism, classism, able-ism, lookism, capitalism, elitism in all its forms would be smashed in my generation and we would have peace, prosperity and justice in our time. Now it is ten years later and after having dropped out, I find myself both desiring to return to progressive political activism and equally reluctant to go back. Not because my politics have changed but because progressive politics have not changed--or perhaps it is a combination of the two.
On the one hand, there is the issue of the anti-intellectualism of progressive politics. Not that there are not intellectuals in progressive politics but in three of the areas that are most important to me from a purely personal basis, gay rights, feminism and the black community, there is a strong anti-intellectual streak that strikes me as both short-sighted and self-defeating. It is this area that I want to start with.
I just finished reading up bell hooks' "Rock My Soul--Black People and Self-Esteem" and this seems as good a place to start. A decade ago, as a young lesbian, I was turned onto bell hooks by a close friend. I devoured her material and it did raise my consciousness. But in her last book I encountered a great deal of resistance from myself and not because I thought that issues of black people and self-esteem were not important. Rather, it was the rehashing of the same old trope of a persistently racist society while throwing only the most obligatory bone to the idea of black people being responsible for our own conditions just like every other ethnic group in America. None of this is to say that there isn't racism, white supremacy or white normalism in this country. Only the most deliberately blind black person would dare to assert that.
Hooks reserves some of her most harsh criticism for John McWhorter, author of 'Losing the Race' and 'Doing Our Own Thing', calling him a neoconservative. Now, having read McWhorter's work he is certainly not a radical or progressive but he is not particularly conservative and certainly the appelation 'neoconservative' is too harsh. True, McWhorter is opposed to affirmative action and he believes, and says, that black Americans need to embrace the idea of excellence and education and stop expecting whites to rescue us. But if insisting that blacks stop telling one another that being educated is 'acting white' is conservative than any black who is concerned about uplifting the race (as we used to phrase it) is then a neoconservative which makes most blacks over a certain age, who grew up with a particular form of civil rights language, a neoconservative. Now, I do support affirmative action (with a great deal of reservation) but I agree with McWhorter's other thesis. Does that make me a neoconservative? I would reject that characterization for myself because when I look at conservative policies, I do not see much that I agree with.
This leads to the heart of what I think are two of the biggest problems plaguing progressive politics these days. One is that we aren't creating much in the way of applicable policies, even if they fail. The second is that there seems to be very little room for diversity of opinion. Certainly in many feminist circles, everyone has the right to express their real thoughts, feelings and opinions on a matter provided that it doesn't go against whatever direction the prevailing ideological winds are blowing.
Over the last decade I have become enchanted with neo-Darwinian thinking and the more I have read into the matter and its outgrowth, evolutionary psychology/sociobiology, the more I think that the Left in America, certainly, has shot itself in the foot by not just ignoring Darwinism as an analytical tool but in being overtly hostile to Darwinian thinking. This, in itself, would not be so bad if the most of the people doing the criticism had any idea what Darwinism and evolutionary psychology were about. The big problem is that most people who are so quick to criticize Darwin, Richard Dawkins or Edward O. Wilson have never read them! All they know is that Darwin wrote something about humans coming from monkeys (incorrect) that Richard Dawkins wrote something about us having genes for selfishness (also incorrect) and that Wilson wrote something about sociobiology claiming that racism, sexism, and all our other social ills were natural and we should all just accept our place in the 'natural order of things' (both incorrect and defamatory because the man, as far as I am aware, holds no such opinions). Instead of actually reading these authors, all of whom are rather important, most on the Left, if they are aware of them at all, simply dismiss them because someone else said that someone other lot disagrees with them.
This is the kind of anti-intellectualism that I have become disturbed by. Right now, in America, the right-wing seems to be holding all the cards and without a concerted effort by progressives to rethink some of our positions we risk irrelevancy and then the long climb out of that hole. But in progressive circles we are more concerned with 'feelings' than with 'thought'. We have theorized ourselves into a corner. It is all well and good to say that 'all cultures have myths and science is our myth' but firstly, that doesn't particularly mean anything and secondly, if that is the case why is it only Western trained engineers who have managed to build airplanes? Other cultures have and have had myths of flying (the Greek story of Daedalus and Icarus leaps to mind) why didn't they manage to build flying machines if all cultural myths are equally valid descriptions of the way the world works.
The other problem with that kind of mindset is that it is so relativistic that it paralyzes action. If, in fact, Western values are just one set of values no more or worse than any other, what, precisely can we say to the Wahabbi Islam? Isn't the belief that women should be covered head-to-toe in a chador and forbidden to leave the home under pain of stoning just another cultural artifact and we are in no position to critique it? Well, I'm certain that the Taliban would like it that way but I'm not sure that American feminists have thought through the consistency (or lack thereof) of their position on this matter.
Again, the anti-intellectualism on the part of Leftist footsoldiers prevents these topics even coming up. To suggest that rationalism really is a superior way of getting to reasonable social policy is dismissed as being 'male identified' or 'over-identified with the oppressor'. Well, if that is the case then progressives and feminists might as well pack up and go home now because we will never get anywhere.
On the one hand, there is the issue of the anti-intellectualism of progressive politics. Not that there are not intellectuals in progressive politics but in three of the areas that are most important to me from a purely personal basis, gay rights, feminism and the black community, there is a strong anti-intellectual streak that strikes me as both short-sighted and self-defeating. It is this area that I want to start with.
I just finished reading up bell hooks' "Rock My Soul--Black People and Self-Esteem" and this seems as good a place to start. A decade ago, as a young lesbian, I was turned onto bell hooks by a close friend. I devoured her material and it did raise my consciousness. But in her last book I encountered a great deal of resistance from myself and not because I thought that issues of black people and self-esteem were not important. Rather, it was the rehashing of the same old trope of a persistently racist society while throwing only the most obligatory bone to the idea of black people being responsible for our own conditions just like every other ethnic group in America. None of this is to say that there isn't racism, white supremacy or white normalism in this country. Only the most deliberately blind black person would dare to assert that.
Hooks reserves some of her most harsh criticism for John McWhorter, author of 'Losing the Race' and 'Doing Our Own Thing', calling him a neoconservative. Now, having read McWhorter's work he is certainly not a radical or progressive but he is not particularly conservative and certainly the appelation 'neoconservative' is too harsh. True, McWhorter is opposed to affirmative action and he believes, and says, that black Americans need to embrace the idea of excellence and education and stop expecting whites to rescue us. But if insisting that blacks stop telling one another that being educated is 'acting white' is conservative than any black who is concerned about uplifting the race (as we used to phrase it) is then a neoconservative which makes most blacks over a certain age, who grew up with a particular form of civil rights language, a neoconservative. Now, I do support affirmative action (with a great deal of reservation) but I agree with McWhorter's other thesis. Does that make me a neoconservative? I would reject that characterization for myself because when I look at conservative policies, I do not see much that I agree with.
This leads to the heart of what I think are two of the biggest problems plaguing progressive politics these days. One is that we aren't creating much in the way of applicable policies, even if they fail. The second is that there seems to be very little room for diversity of opinion. Certainly in many feminist circles, everyone has the right to express their real thoughts, feelings and opinions on a matter provided that it doesn't go against whatever direction the prevailing ideological winds are blowing.
Over the last decade I have become enchanted with neo-Darwinian thinking and the more I have read into the matter and its outgrowth, evolutionary psychology/sociobiology, the more I think that the Left in America, certainly, has shot itself in the foot by not just ignoring Darwinism as an analytical tool but in being overtly hostile to Darwinian thinking. This, in itself, would not be so bad if the most of the people doing the criticism had any idea what Darwinism and evolutionary psychology were about. The big problem is that most people who are so quick to criticize Darwin, Richard Dawkins or Edward O. Wilson have never read them! All they know is that Darwin wrote something about humans coming from monkeys (incorrect) that Richard Dawkins wrote something about us having genes for selfishness (also incorrect) and that Wilson wrote something about sociobiology claiming that racism, sexism, and all our other social ills were natural and we should all just accept our place in the 'natural order of things' (both incorrect and defamatory because the man, as far as I am aware, holds no such opinions). Instead of actually reading these authors, all of whom are rather important, most on the Left, if they are aware of them at all, simply dismiss them because someone else said that someone other lot disagrees with them.
This is the kind of anti-intellectualism that I have become disturbed by. Right now, in America, the right-wing seems to be holding all the cards and without a concerted effort by progressives to rethink some of our positions we risk irrelevancy and then the long climb out of that hole. But in progressive circles we are more concerned with 'feelings' than with 'thought'. We have theorized ourselves into a corner. It is all well and good to say that 'all cultures have myths and science is our myth' but firstly, that doesn't particularly mean anything and secondly, if that is the case why is it only Western trained engineers who have managed to build airplanes? Other cultures have and have had myths of flying (the Greek story of Daedalus and Icarus leaps to mind) why didn't they manage to build flying machines if all cultural myths are equally valid descriptions of the way the world works.
The other problem with that kind of mindset is that it is so relativistic that it paralyzes action. If, in fact, Western values are just one set of values no more or worse than any other, what, precisely can we say to the Wahabbi Islam? Isn't the belief that women should be covered head-to-toe in a chador and forbidden to leave the home under pain of stoning just another cultural artifact and we are in no position to critique it? Well, I'm certain that the Taliban would like it that way but I'm not sure that American feminists have thought through the consistency (or lack thereof) of their position on this matter.
Again, the anti-intellectualism on the part of Leftist footsoldiers prevents these topics even coming up. To suggest that rationalism really is a superior way of getting to reasonable social policy is dismissed as being 'male identified' or 'over-identified with the oppressor'. Well, if that is the case then progressives and feminists might as well pack up and go home now because we will never get anywhere.
