File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1998/marxism-thaxis.9802, message 665


Date: Fri, 27 Feb 1998 15:58:55 -0500
From: Yoshie Furuhashi <Furuhashi.1-AT-osu.edu>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Easy Virtue or Hard Choices (was ethics and intentions


Dear Rob,

>Here comes some of my bourgeois innocence again.  Apologies in advance.
>
>>>I agree with Yoshie that there is no necessity for such "hard choices" to
>>>exist in a minimally decent society, or at most to be marginal. I do not
>>>think it even remotely utopian to believe such, since in fact humanity got
>>>along very well without bourgeois morality (i.e. a morality of "hard
>>>choices") for about 100,000 years.
>
>I wasn't aware we went without hard choices for 100 000 years!  This may
>well have been so, but I'd love Carrol or Yoshie to tell us why it might
>have been.  Hard moral choices explicitly appear in folk stories going back
>to the first written records of extant folk tales (eg the  *Epic of
>Gilgamesh*).  Are you merely saying that instrumental necessity in hard
>lives effectively gave the sorts of choices we call 'hard' much 'easier'
>(ie, 'We must leave our children to die, else we all die'' or 'We must take
>those women from their tribe by force, else we will die out')?  Obviously
>the conditions of 'primitive communism' - an externally imposed necessity -
>don't apply now - where communism would be the product of voluntary action
>in conditions of plenty and relative security.  I guess I just don't have
>the imagination to see what you're arguing.

Carrol did not speak of the existence or non-existence of "hard moral
choices." What he said is that "bourgeois morality (i.e. a morality of 'hard
choices')" did not exist before the advent of capitalism. A big difference.

>>>My prime example of what seems to me an absolute LUST FOR HARD CHOICES is
>>>the insistence of so many people that though they are fully for freedom of
>>>choice on the issue of abortion, they want that choice to be a HARD CHOICE
>>>for the woman. So I would further suggest that the LUST FOR HARD CHOICES
>>>is most often at least a remnant of patriarchy, more often positive
>>>misogyny. It was in opposition to this lust that I insisted in an earlier
>>>debate that we had no right to question a woman's reasons for abortion,
>>>and that if she wanted one on a whim, there was no reason to condemn or
>>>even frown on that choice.
>
>Seeing a hard choice is necessarily reflective of a 'lust for hard
>choices'?  How do you justify that leap?

Seeing a hard choice *where there is none* is reflective of a lust for hard
choices.

>>Damn right, Carrol. Moralism is always pornographic. It is almost true that
>>the "LUST FOR HARD CHOICES is most often at least a remnant of patriarchy,
>>more often positive misogyny." But I want to make a qualification. It is
>>not a "remnant" of patriarchy. It is a defining feature of the marriage of
>>capitalism and patriarchy, which was not widespread before its emergence.
>>Cultural forms that emerged with capitalism (such as the bourgeois novel
>>and melodrama) thrive on the *sadistic gaze* cast upon *female agony* as
>>well as *masochistic identification* with it; visions of women racked by
>>HARD CHOICES are materials out of which both generic and gendered
>>discourses of bourgeois individualism have been staged.
>
>Certainly such discourses have been staged on the angst of women's hard
>choices.  And plenty on men's too.  So?  And, anyway, the agony of others
>is not necessarily engaged with sadistically (although I'm personally aware
>of an indentification tendency, which might _very broadly_ be deemed
>masochistic) - do you imagine Madam Bouverie's agonies sexually arouse us,
>Yoshie?  They don't.  Just as Hamlet's don't.  Just because a widely shared
>view effectively causes suffering for many women, does not mean that view
>represents misogyny.  Just as the traditional view that men should do the
>dangerous work (eg soldiering) does not reflect a loathing for men (or, if
>it does, 'tis a self-loathing).  You can not so easily read intention or
>inclination from consequence.  You may be seeing the consequence of a
>complex of relations - and most of us are agreed those amount to
>patriarchal capitalism - but I think the word 'misogyny' is far too often
>thrown at people.

I did not speak of "intention or inclination." I spoke of ideology and its
staging. A big difference.

Yoshie




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