File spoon-archives/aut-op-sy.archive/aut-op-sy_2001/aut-op-sy.0106, message 188


From: "cwright" <cwright-AT-21stcentury.net>
Subject: AUT: Fw: wheee... nationalism  ...
Date: Thu, 14 Jun 2001 20:52:11 -0500


I am posting this as a friend of mine made what I think is a very useful and
precise comment.

Chris
----- Original Message -----
From: "Nick De Genova" <nickdegenova-AT-altavista.com>
To: <cwright-AT-21stcentury.net>
Sent: Thursday, June 14, 2001 2:26 PM
Subject: Re: wheee... nationalism ...


> Dear Chris,
>
> I've read through what you sent me and am very much in agreement with your
arguments.  Of course, It's very difficult to read between the lines and
understand what the other prior comments were, but that's fine.
>
> The only thing I would caution you about is that your examples seem
sometimes not well-chosen, and I think that this derives from thinking about
race, gender, nationalism all at once without careful enough distinctions.
I agree whole-heartedly that they do indeed need to be thought together and
as analogous forms of fetishization.  But I think that there is also a
danger here -- namely, that you don't sufficiently grant each its
specificity (and probably this is more about race/nation as one pole and
gender as the other).
>
> Consider the following from your post:
>
> > In this relation, to go back to Vietnam, no Vietnamese worker or peasant
had
> > any privileges anywhere in the world relative to any US worker,
including
> > not in Vietnam.  A US worker, by dint of US citizenship and disparities
in
> > wealth and an uneven power relationship, could engage in a part of the
> > domination of Vietnamese labor (for example, the bulk of prostitution in
> > Vietnam serviced US soldiers, who were overhwlemingly working class or
by
> > supporting the war effort.)  To win working class unity, we have to
start,
> > in some situations, where a national consciousness and nationalist
> > tendencies have developed among the working class (and often very
> > politically active and politically conscious sections of the working
class),
> > from the recognition of those disparities within the class globally,
rather
> > than to deny hierarchical divisions which ameliorate the exploitation of
one
> > section of the global working class at the expense of another, which is
used
> > by capital to decompose that 'privileged' section of the working class
into
> > a form of class collaboration.
>
> In this paragraph, I have to admit that I'm not really sure what your
point is, but most glaring to me is the way that prostituion is posited as
an example of inequality between workers situated in relation to unequal
nation-states, and its gendered character is overlooked altogether.  Of
course, there is an infinitely more complicated web of patriarchal
oppressions and complicities between men across nation that would make this
an enormously more complex issue than the way it is figured in your
argument.
>
> This is the only example that really troubled me, but I think that it's
indicative of a more general danger that comes from trying to toss these
distinct forms of oppression together for the sake of a more general
argument about fetishization.  Not that I disagree wityh that approach, but
I want to caution you to develop it much more judiciously and carefully.
>
> Yours,
> Nick
>
> Find the best deals on the web at AltaVista Shopping!
> http://www.shopping.altavista.com
>



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