File spoon-archives/postanarchism.archive/postanarchism_2004/postanarchism.0409, message 25


From: "Don Anderson" <simmers-AT-mindspring.com>
Subject: Re: Re: [postanarchism] strategic essentialism
Date: Fri, 10 Sep 2004 00:45:09 -0700


1) could the
> > strategicness of the invoked essentialisms not still undermine
> > the category of essence in general?
>
> Well, Diana Fuss seems to think so. In _Essentially Speaking_, she writes:
>
> 32-33: "I cannot help but think that the determining factor in deciding
essentialism's political or strategic value is dependent upon who practices
it: in the hands of a hegemonic group, essentialism can be employed as a
powerful tool of ideological domination; in the hands of the subaltern, the
use of humanism to mime (in the Irigarian sense of to undo by overdoing)
humanism can represent a powerful displacing repetition. The question of the
permissibility, if you will, of engaging in essentialism is therefore framed
and determined by the subject-position from which one speaks."
>
> So, for Fuss, "essentialism" isn't "always and everywhere" the same thing,
regardless of who's looking at it or engaging in it; indeed, "To insist that
essentialism is always and everywhere reactionary is, for the
constructionist, to buy into essentialism in the very act of making the
charge; _it is to act as if essentialism has an essence_" (21).
>
> I like the way she points out the contradiction inherent in an
essentializing denunciation of "essentialism," but I'm not entirely
comfortable with her defense of strategic essentialism here. First of all,
it sounds a little too much like essentialism is "bad" only when used by
certain people (or, to be more fair, from certain "positions"). Can it
really be so neutral? She doesn't seem to really believe it, given the way
that "humanism" (as a synonym for "essentialism") seems to function here (as
something one would only want to "mime" in order to "undo").


"Privileged subject position" sort of arguments make me uncomfortable too.
But the _effects_ of essentialist claims are certainly different when made
by the powerful as part of a project of political dominance, as opposed to
the effects of such claims made in resistance to such power.  The example
from the Intuitionist was a good example - "empiricism" in support of the
system, versus empiricism as a survival strategy by an opposition
intuitionist.

Would it make sense to distinguish between (strategic) essentialist claims,
and essentialism as a quality of a discourse?  This would preserve Lila Mae
as one who is not an Empiricist, but makes use of it for her own purposes.
Does she lose something to Empiricism in this exchange?  Yes, just as the
Zapatistas (and others) lose some ability to define themselves when they
play the role of "Mayas."  But this loss is calculated with the eye to
gaining something else - part of what "strategic" means here.

If there is a valid distinction between Essentialism as a (powerful)
discourse and separate claims of essentialism(s), then antiessentialism is
not necessarily to "buy into essentialism in the very act of making the
charge... to act as if essentialism has an essence", but to recognize the
presence of the big E behind the small e.


> I suppose then the question is "strategic with a view to what end?"

>From the discussion of the Intuitionist (which I unfortunately haven't read)
I'm hearing two senses of this:

1) the one sense is when Lila Mae invokes empiricism to protect herself in a
particular context.  This might be better termed "tactical essentialism."

2) the second is the question of whether contextualized or temporary
essentialist claims or positions could be part of a larger strategy to
unravel the political force of big E Essentialism.  Here the question is
appropriate as to what would happen if the intuitionists took over the
elevator system.  Would it continue to function in the same way?  or would
they dismantle or transform it?  (If I were more clever I would make some
sort of "Aufheben" pun at this point.)

>
> Yes -- which is why Pyrrhonian skepticism is so socially and politically
conservative. "Conquer yourself, and not the world," as Descartes (wearing
his skeptic's hat) says at the beginning of the _Meditations_. Beliefs can
be stripped away, leaving the behaviors intact, like a neutron bomb
preserving the skyline. Presumably one could continue to be a Klansman while
secretly chuckling to oneself about how illusory are the foundations of
white supremacy.
>

Since the example could as well be anyone on the left or right as a
Klansman, I can't help but interpret the claim that "skepticism is so
socially and politically conservative" to mean that it is not _inherently_
radicalizing (i.e. contains no political critique).  This is accurate to my
knowledge but I don't believe skepticism excludes such a critique.  But
should radicalism spring from philosophic principles, or from the motives
(in their own lives) of those who adopt them?


> Then again, there is something to Zizek's insistence that practices can
supplant, or can even _be_, a kind of "belief." Terry Eagleton, paraphrasing
Zizek, gives the example of a "whites only" park bench in apartheid-era
South Africa: when a white person sits on it, quite irrespective of his/her
"beliefs," s/he is participating in an ideology, which is "in" the bench and
the act of sitting down on it.
>

Good point.  Neither skepticism nor anti (or non) essentialism are enough.
But they may be useful.


On Sextus Empiricus quote:
> Interesting (and funny), but again, notice how the skeptic positions
himself as the epistemically privileged party, the knowing "doctor" who
diagnoses others' "ailments" (and decides how much of the truth they can
handle!). Doesn't that seem a little manipulative or condescending, if not
vanguardist per se?
>

It does, but like "strategic essentialism" (potentially) it undoes itself.
What I found interesting in this quote is the idea that 1) in different
situations, different approaches to "truth" might be appropriate, and 2) one
person (SE's doctor) might find different approaches to truth appropriate at
different times.  Or even at once: of course SE makes no claims of truth, so
his doctor is not really a doctor, and doesn't really administer truth.  But
nor is he not a doctor, and nor does he not administer truth, neither.

Okay,maybe I'm losing it.


   

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