From: cbcox-AT-rs6000.cmp.ilstu.edu (Carrol Cox) Subject: M-FEM: Teresa Ebert and space for debate Date: Sat, 31 May 1997 16:33:51 -0500 (CDT) I have finally begun the reading of Teresa Ebert's *Ludic Feminism and After* and have completed Chap. 1, though I will have to re-read and think further on it before attempting a detailed response on the list. But the conclusion of her 1st chapter caught my attention because I think it highly relevant to some of this list's current and near- past difficulties. I will quote the last two paragraphs nearly in full. To critique the contradictions, the blind spots or aporias in feminist theory; to relate what the theorist does say to what to she does not say; to expose the hidden assumptions and power re- lations in her work, and above all, to relate her discourses to the suppressed realities and contradictions over the social division of labor, is not trashing or one-upmanship or a power game, as Gallop, Hirsch, and Miller maintain. Rather, it is an effort to understand the way racist, patriarchal capitalism limits how and what we know and to try to articulate new frontiers, new parameters, for our knowledges. It is only through a rigorous critique exposing the hidden social relations of production underlying a theory that it is possible for us to begin to break through these historical limits. It is, I believe, only through a collectivity of critique that feminists can together rupture the historical and ideological constraints on our knowledges in order to perceive and explain the systematic operation of patriarchal capitalist exploitation and, out of this knowledge, act to change society and end social injustice. Thiis book is a contribution to building an oppositional critique and the transformative knowledges it enables. However, by critique I am not referring to the ludic notions of what Richard Rorty calls "conversations"--polite exchanges in which every point of view has a say. A politically effective critique cannot confine itself to the bourgeois notion of a dialogical or pluralist space in which a diversity of positions are represented with the complacent notion that they are all equally powerful. Pluralism, as it is widely prac-i ticed in postmodernism and, more generally, in the social and cultural relations of a racist, patriarchal capitalism, is not simply a neutral open space. Rather plurality, multiculturalism, multiplicity, and complexity have frequently been deployed to silence and suppress, occlude, and marginalize other positions and to suppress a *fundamental* or *radical* diversity: the differences of the social division of labor, of class antagonisms and the revolutionary struggle to overthrow the existing exploita- tive social relations. The dialogical, in short, masquerades as openness, but it is, in fact, a restricted, closed space in which the dominant frames of intelligibility--especially in ludic postmodernism--violently exclude not only oppositional knowledges but also suppress the "real" material relations of exploitation. In the face of such historical repression and silencing, the project of building an open space for critical exchange cannot be limited to a pluralistic dialogue *within* a single framework but rather requires a *dialectical* critique *in relation to the dominant knowledges that are widely dis- seminated and celebrated. *Real* openness in an unequal society is not given: it must be struggled over and built through a dialectical contestation that challenges the violent exclusions and breaks the silence of hegemonic frames of intelligibility. A collectivity of critique does not need polite conversation so much as it requires strong, rigorous advocacy of the silenced positions and sustained rigorous critiques of the limitations and hidden assumptions and effects of the privileged discourses. A collectivity of critique, in short, is a productive site in which to participate in the social struggle over theory and to build, through dialectical contestations, the necessary and effective knowledges for an emancipatory praxis. Teresa L. Ebert, *Ludic Feminism and After: Postmodernism, Desire, and Labor in Late Capitalism* (Univ. of Michigan Press, 1996), pp. 43-44. =========================================== Before returning to what, in this passage, seems to me to be peculiarly apropos to this list, I want to make some general ob- servations concerning Ebert, on whose work I want to report ex-- tensively over the next two months. (I believe one or two other members of this list have already stated a desire to discuss her work.) Subscribers to this list who also are subscribed to marxism- international probably remember with a sour taste the invasion of the Buffaloes (two grad students from SUNY Buffalo) several weeks ago, and might be prejudiced against Ebert on the basis of that episode of craziness. I want to urge, however, giving careful and respectable attention to her work, the importance of which is not touched either by unfortunate political alliances or by political errors that might or might not show up in the journals *Transformations* or *Red Orange* (both of which, in any case, publish very useful material). Moreover, rather than complicating the simple (as the Buffaloes tended to do), Ebert shows real ability to make as clear as possible the complex, and to eliminate false and deceptive forms of complexity. In any case, I believe this book is important and deserves to be read, thought over, and discussed prior to engaging in any listing of its possible errors. * * * * * * * * * * * * This list, in the last three months, has faced three challenges to its very existence. (1) The sheer lack of activity on it over a lengthy period of time. (2) The objections of a number of its members to the presence on the list of others. (3) The presence of two or three whose postings constituted sheer noise, threatening to blank out any form of conversation, and giving greater grounds both for those who chose only to "lurk" and those who desubbed from the list in disgust. (I bracket these de-subbings under (2)). I believe we are dealing here with the need to make two sets of distinctions. First, between what Mao called "contradictions among the people" and "the enemy." Second, between "contradictions among the people" and simple criminality. [I'm sorry; I am expecting an important phone call, and this message is taking longer to write than I expected. I will have to break off here and continue in a later message.] Carrol
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