From: LeoCasey <LeoCasey-AT-aol.com>
Date: Mon, 16 Mar 1998 18:44:26 EST
Subject: M-TH: Barren and Fruitful Exchanges


Justin is uncharcteristically frothing in his fusillade against Judith Butler
and post-modernism, and it does nothing for him or for his position. It is the
"bucket of shit" trope and tone, thoroughly embedded in the rhetoric of the
crusades with the calls to free the "New Jerusalem" from the post-modern
infidels, which makes productive exchanges on any of these issues well-nigh
impossible.

Let's look at just one example. Take the imputation of academic dilletantism
and a lack of involvement with real politics to Butler. Justin, Yoshie and
others on the list do this, not based on any real evidence or personal
knowledge (Justin seems to have lost all touch with his empiricist side here),
but based on their hermeneutical readings of her theoretical position -- she
must have no political experience or engagement. From what I know, largely
second-hand accounts, but also based on hearing her speak of some of her
involvement in the lesbian and gay movement, this is definitely not the case.
More important, however, is how such dismissive turns of argument (not
fundamentally different, I believe, from the type of argument by  imputation
of personal motives that Justin recently -- and correctly -- criticized in
Carroll) end all conversation. Why should someone in her position with her
politics respond any differently than anyone of us would when dismissed in
such a way -- with a glorious "fuck you" to folks who would wildly generalize
about the depth of our political commitment without the slightest bit of
direct knowledge of who we are and what we do? Also, what does it say about
our politics that we can not imagine that a person might be similarly engaged
as us, with similar commitments, but draw different conclusions? Is
excommunication as heresy the only response we can muster to such theoretical
diversity? Most of the time I just turn my head when I see these exchanges,
but I find it a bit too depressing to see Justin descend into these depths to
say nothing. 

Imagine this: instead of this endless, tiresome debate with the interminable
repetition of this uselessly polarized options -- the "particularlistic"
identity politics of difference found in the "new social movements" vs. the
"universalistic" class politics found in the "working class movement" -- we
finally admitted that identity (a notion of who I am, where I came from and
where I am going) is the necessary ground of all meaningful political projects
in the modern era, and we actually examine the constant struggles over how to
shape class, race, gender, and sex identities and thus to lay the foundation
of different political projects. Why not admit that the working class subject
of Debsian socialism (the closest we have gotten to a mass working class
identity in the US) was not some idyllic universal, but a clearly gendered
(male) and raced (white) political subject? Why not try to understand why it
took that shape, so that such an understanding might inform meaningful
interventions in the current battles over the construction of class, gender
and racial identities? Why not examine the different struggles within the
African-American community or within feminism as projects to construct
different identities, with very different political consequences?

Yes, as Doug correctly notes, Judith Butler is very weak on spelling out the
practical consequences of her political theory; but which one of us -- that
is, those of us not revelling in the endless recital of old dogmatic
Trotskyist formulations like senile monseigneurs faithfully repeating their
rosaries and stations of the cross (the 15th station: Trotsky addresses the
national question) -- has it so much better and clearly worked out? Why is
there this need to prevent such conversation from breaking out?

Leo


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