Date: Mon, 16 Mar 1998 15:25:04 -0500 (EST) From: Justin Schwartz <jschwart-AT-freenet.columbus.oh.us> Subject: Re: M-TH: listen, vanguardists! Yoshie's dead right on this. Pomos like Butler, for all their purported rejection of false dualities, tend to accept the following duality: Marxist materialism=repression, totalitarianism, enforced uniformity, sexist, racist, other bad-ist bad faith, etc; "new social movements"= freedom, pluralism, diversity and happy acceptance and celebration of differences, obverxcoming of bad "isms." This is unhistorical on both counts, but what does Butler carea about that? "Facts are stupid things." Marxist groups and movements had had, in various incarnations, a lot of stupidity and worse to answer for. They were also the backbone of antiracist and labor struggles for many long dark years. In the 1980s, my experience of even the particular variety of Marxism Leninsim I once was involved in was a model of diversity, tolerance, and pluralism. "NSM" single issue groups are as riven with ugly attitudes as any outfits youw ill find anywhere. I don't recall whether Yoshie was in town when the left (including yours truly) was redbaited out of the anti-Gulf War group we helped found in the single most destructive bit of exclusionary politics I have ever seen in my life. And as far as top-down, totalitarian politics goes, I can tell stories about the Rainbow Coalition in Michigan that would chill Beria. Butlet obviously has no notion of the nitty gritty daily grind of either far left Marxist groups or practiacl struggles ins ingle issue movements. I wonder whether it's just my particular trajectory, but I have never met, in nearly 20 years of organizing, a full blooded pomo involved in practical movement work, mailing letters, organizing marches, bringing speakers, putting up posters, arranging buses, etc. Not one. Youshie is also right that talk of the "NSM" is exceedingly misleading. The peace and antinuclear movements are as old as the century. I worked with Quakers who opposed WWII and whose parents opposed WWI and indeed whose grandparents worked against the Spanish-American War. The first major solidarity movement of the century was the international left support for the Spanish republic. I wish the pomos would just go away. They keeo framing things in such a sterile and useless manner that it impedes progress to have to work with them. I think buckets of shit is about right, except that shit represents at least the byproducts of nutrition. --jks On Mon, 16 Mar 1998, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: > Doug cites Butler: > >>From Judith Butler's "Merely Cultural," published in both the current > >Social Text and the current New Left Review: > > > >"To fault new social movements for their vitality, as some have done, is > >precisely to refuse to understand that any future for the Left will have > >to build on the basis of movements that compel democratic participation, > >and that any effort to impose unity upon such movements from the outside > >will be rejected once again as a form of vanguardism dedicated to the > >production of hierarchy and dissension, producing the very > >factionalization >that it asserts is coming from outside itself." > > There are several things to be said about Butler's comments, besides the > kernel of truth I have already referred to. > > (1) I don't think Butler knows much about the *day-to-day grind* of social > movement politics. If she did, she would know that the kind of undemocratic > practice, production of hierarchy, repression + suppression of dissent, > etc. also exist *within social movements themselves*. Trust me, I have been > there. Covert + overt red-baiting, lavender-baiting, etc. have gone on in > many social movements. > > (2) Social movements are not necessarily new. Struggles for land are much > older than left labor politics, for instance. So are indigenous people's > struggles. The concept of "new" social movements itself, I think, is based > on an inadequate conception of history, which tends to foster a false > dichotomy of the alleged universal (that is in reality merely a particular) > versus the alleged particulars (which are in fact crucibles for the true > universal). We need a *genuine historical materialism* instead of a stale > sociological term. > > (3) The kind of postmodernism to which Butler subscribes *cannot be easily > squared with social movements*, not to mention marxism. Some of what she > has to say is of interest to marxists, but she has a wrong ontology, an > inadequate epistemology, and no political project to speak of. > > Yoshie > > > > > --- from list marxism-thaxis-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu --- --- from list marxism-thaxis-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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