Date: Thu, 24 Sep 1998 13:32:51 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: Edward W. Said: The president and the baseball player  (fwd)


I think that recasting this debate in terms of ideology could be a more
fruitful avenue than merely attacking/defending the president. My concern
is that Democratic/liberal position on the issue appears hypocritical. I
don't mean to criticize anyone here, but can't we use this issue to
reflect on some stubbornly difficult theoretical issues? As long as
the nation is obsessed with the issue, can't we exploit it in order
to make our academic interests relavent to the public? (Sorry
for the length of what follows, I'll keep it shorter in the future)

1) Is the slogan "the private is political" still useful for activism? 
Although it may be an exaggeration, it is hard to imagine how feminism
could have made its inroads without deconstructing the private/public
binary, and, indeed, one can argue that the binary itself is a "political"
move that determines what can and cannot be a subject of political
contestation. Still, in an age where government and legal apparatus
permeates our entire social being, maintaining the "private" sphere may be
the only defense against governmental intrusion (cf. Kundera and other
eastern european writers). How do we resolve the contradiction? (I would
think that we can both criticize the latter while still insisting that the
kind of sex acts one performs does have "political" valences. A group
called the Yeastie Girls has an outrageously funny song that calls for
sexual equality during oral sex.) 

2) How does the notion of "consent" fit in with workings of ideology? Most
current descriptions of ideology insist that the postulation of a
freely-choosing subject is an essential component of ideology. To say, for
instance, that Lewinsky consented to the affair implies the ideology that
equates patriarchal power with sexual attraction played no role over her
decisions. This does not simply mean, however, that Lewinisky was the
victim of said ideology (that switch merely relocates the subject's agency
to the larger ideological formation). How can we critique the illusion of
a freely-choosing subject without falling into cultural or ideological
determinism? 

By the way, the U.S. "outrage" over this affair is probably more due to
the libininal familial investments that structures both our foreign policy
(family of nations, rule of international law, etc) and domestic
arrangements (president as father of the country, T.V.'s presentation of
workplace as extended family,etc) than an overly "religious" (read
Puritanical) orientation, although I don't want to discount the latter.
Isn't there an unspoken assumption that Clinton's affair with Lewinsky (an
intern half his age, as the commentators constantly remind us) is
incestuous? If anybody knows of an apppropriate venue, I would love to
present a paper that analyzes Bill and Monica by way of Jane Gallop--Call
it "The Intern's Seduction." 





     --- from list postcolonial-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---