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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