In my post following this I did not say "surely she wasn't a Marxist." I attach a copy of my response as well. The word "Marx" appears in my post one time. I asked how her theory of commoditization related to Marx's theory of commodity fetishism.
I don't disagree that we toned down the argument at certain points. But given all the accusations in later posts, I am putting on these original posts, because all I did was respond to criticism with criticism. To say someone is exocticizing the other, providing fertile soil for comodification, and completely blind to any sort of critical examination of where this 'blackness' comes from, and dangerous in relation to Mexicano, Chicano, Puerto Rican, Filipino,Chinese etc is not "nice" and anyone who says it should reasonably expect an argument in response.
In general, a problem with responding SnitgrrRl's discussion is that her hypothetical taking on positions or "identities" for the sake of argument Specifically, her discussion is to the effect of "maybe" I am a Marxist maybe not, but I am not as much of a Marxist as you but why do you keep saying I am not a Marxist. Next she goes " what if I was a Black woman " Well, yea , but lets start with what you are.
But anyway her claim that made some big deal about her being not-Marxist is false as demonstrated by the e-mails, all of which I have reviewed and most of which I have recopied to the list today.
__________
I'd call this 'feeling good' about Blackness stuff bordering on exoticization of the Other.
I'd call it fertile soil for further commodification. (as if the culture industries need any help in this regard)
I'd also call it completely blind to any sort of critical examination of where this 'blackness' comes from which is rancourous, acrimonious debate to be sure.
I'd also call it dangerous. What of Mexicano Chicano Puerto Rican Fillipino Chinese Aleutian Korean Panamanian Samoan Brazilian Etc. Dot dot dot. You get the picture.
SnitgrrRl
________
>>> "K" <d-m-c at worldnet.att.net> 11/16 12:32 PM >>>
I'd call this 'feeling good' about Blackness stuff bordering on exoticization of the Other.
_______
Charles: If you are Black, wouldn't it be exoticization of the Self ? If I am Black, then feeling good about being Black is an important thing to do. It is affirmative self-creation of myself as an individual.
It is Black self-love. Black is beautiful.
Since we are all being Black in this scenario wouldn't it be making the Self an Other ? They is we typa and we is they typa thang.
A white person who can feel Black self-love has made a revolutionary breakthrough in this culture.
But as Max says, there are times when a white person would look foolish trying this. I don't recommend is without a lot of study of Black history and culture and living with Black people,living in Detroit for decades or the like.
______
I'd call it fertile soil for further commodification. (as if the culture industries need any help in this regard) _______
Charles: Commodity fetishism is reversal of subject and object. Things become subjects and people become objects. Here we have people turning into a different type of people ( the thread on which you are commenting involves white people becoming Black people)
That is not commodity fetishism.
How does your theory of commodification relate to Marx's commodity fetishism ? __________
I'd also call it completely blind to any sort of critical examination of where this 'blackness' comes from which is rancourous, acrimonious debate to be sure. __________
Charles: The blackness comes from history , the social tradition which is centered around the struggle for freedom within and from slavery and racism , and some carryovers from African culture.
The critical examination is practical-critical, that is revolutionary, after Marx in the First Thesis on Feuerbach and the last, in that we seek to change the world by action in it. We want to criticise by action guided by theory, criticise the world by practical-critical activity and struggle. As Fredrick Douglass taught, there is no progress without struggle.
This struggle for freedom is Black history and a source of Blackness. There is more than rancourous and acrimounious debate, but struggle by force of arms as by John Brown and the Civil War. As Douglass said there must be a struggle whether moral or physical or both.
_________
I'd also call it dangerous. What of Mexicano Chicano Puerto Rican Fillipino Chinese Aleutian Korean Panamanian Samoan Brazilian Etc. Dot dot dot. You get the picture. __________
Charles: No, I don't get the picture. Please reiterate.
I would say anybody who calls me dangerous I kind of consider a right winger per se. I am the safest person I know.
My position are all proletarian internationalist and in solidarity with the national liberation and freedom movements and interests of all the groups you list above. To call what I am saying dangerous is so opposite the truth that I wonder what's up with you.
Charles Brown
Workers and Oppressed Peoples of the Earth , Unite.
>>> "K" <d-m-c at worldnet.att.net> 11/19 5:03 AM >>>
Matthew wrote:
>At the same time, as one who has appreciated the
insights of both charles and
>snitgrrl in the past, I have to admit that the ratio
of useful communication to
>sarcastic remarks and posturing is very small in
their recent exchange. you
>have to really dig through a lot of unfortunate crap
to get at the gems in this
>one. not either one at their best. why is it so
uncool to be nice or give
>someone the benefit of the doubt on this list? mat
Like Charles, I'm not exactly sure that I've been terribly unfair. I wonder how much of this has to do with everyone's assumptions about who Charles and I and Frances are. A Black man and presumably two women, though I don't know what assumptions have been made about race/ethnicity w/ regard to Frances & I.
In any event, I obviously have a high level of tolerance for flammage, especially of the jabbing light hearted variety. But I really engaged in very little of that. I do believe that I was being quite nice. I don't have the first post to Charles. I know that I spoke indirectly saying that what he'd typed "sounded" like multiculturalism and identity politics.
Charles response was that surely I couldn't be a marxist if I thought this about his post. A typical tactic on this List.
_________ Charles: This is inaccurate. See above.)
__________
He also said that I must be a right winger if I thought he was dangerous. _____________
Charles: I still think anyone who thinks what I said is dangerous is a rightwinger.
____________
But here are parts of the second post to him, an attempt to clarify and concede his points. Original in quotes, commentary added with asterisks:
"BTW, Charles, solidarity in mourning over Stokely Carmichael. I used to love the passion in his writing."
**Now, tell me was this snitty, mean-spirited?
"By focusing solely on identity issues, it seems to me all a bit of cultural or identity politics. While surely cultural./identity politics have their place at times, it is also quite clear that in academic settings any attempt to understand the structural sources of oppression and, yes, the evolution of Black culture. I don't think you mean to do this, no. But in the hands of some of my colleagues ...."
***As soon as Charles clarified things, I immediately spoke of the ways in which identity politics is taken up elsewhere, especially in academia where I think it is dangerous. I did not speak of Charles' as having this view. I did not speak of Charles as being dangerous. _________
Charles: Your exact words were "I'd call it dangerous." You were referring to my discussion of feeling good about being Black. See above.
"Exoticizing the Other--I'm thinking of bell hooks here (among others) As for the rest, really, see me as a right winger if you'd like. It is surely very likely that whatever I am or say I am won't matter one wit. In any event, thank you very much, but I do have a quite healthy, rich, lively understanding of Black Culture and History as that's what I studied as an undergrad. Why? Because it spoke to me in a way that nothing else did. I could relate to it, you see. Oh, of course, I could know much much more and I try. But, as I said in another post, I also want upper middle class whites to, as they say, unpack their knapsacks of privilege and see exactly how they inscribe and reinscribe their class/race privilege everydamnminuteoftheday."
***I don't know Matthew but I really don't see anything in there that was meanspirited, hurtful, or even snitty. I got snitty when Charles immediately assumed I was a rightwinger because I thought identity politics was dangerous. But I think I should get snitty when I'm immediately considered a right winger.
In any event, I indicated pretty early on that I studied African American Culture and History, was familiar at least with bell hooks. And what happens in the next post? Mr. Brown is challenging my credentials. Charles writes:
"As a matter of fact, all of the Black women I know (and I have talked with a LOTTTA Black women about Black feminism) think it is important that I emphasize the Black liberation struggle if I am going to be a feminist. Do you know about this, or have you talked with a lot of Black women about feminism ?"
***Now forgive me Matthew, but I have a hard time understanding how it is that Charles feels it warranted to authorize his claims by appeals to either Angela Davis or to his conversations with Black women about feminism. How does it resolve anything. Suppose that I'm quite familiar w/ A Davis and I've spoken w/ plenty of Black women about feminism. Why suppose even that I'm a Black woman. Is it not perfectly reasonable to think that I might differ from Charles' in the way I understand Black Liberation Politics or the way I understand Davis' work and Black Feminist Thought. BFT is extraordinarily varied, and indeed I don't even call it feminist, as I see it as sometimes hostile to white middle class feminism. There is a great deal of debate about whether the moniker feminism is appropriate (see for ex, Pat Collins, Alice Walker). There is also an extensive and bitter history between BFT and Black Liberation Politics, especially Black Power which Charles referred to early on.
Charles went on to suggest, again, that I can't possibly be a marxist with "Charles: As if petit bourgeois scholars are better feminists than Marxists. Ha !" And in response to my complaint that he was playing the game of I'm a marxist and you're not, he went on to say that:
"Charles: The annointed ones in capitalist America are the anti-Marxists. If you are with the non-Marxists, you are with the annointed group,the power group. As for your characterization that I annoint people, this is inaccurate. It is typical of the liberal branch of the truly elite and powerful intellectual sector to try to make it seem that the tiny fraction of intellectuals who are Marxists , the main vicitms of McCarthyism and thought control in U.S. Big Brother , that these victimized Marxists are commanding and annointing elites. This is extremely twisted and the very opposite of the truth. The small size of the number of Marxists is horrible to me. Marxism demands huge majorities, masses to be viable.
Anyway the main point is contrary to what you say, your anti-Marxism is much more in line with the elite , elect and dominant ideology of this world and country. So, your characterization that I am annointing people is the complete reverse of reality. Marxists are in the very anti-thesis of the "elect". For you to be anti-Marxist is to move closer to the elect, as you call it. So what are you talking about ? For example, if you became a Marxist, you would have to worry much more about keeping your job. That means your ideology is more in line with that of the powers that be , the true annointers . It is your anti-Marxism that annoints you and you posture as if you are ghettoized by me when I am powerless and in groups that have the least power."
Again, it really isn't warranted here to accuse one's interlocutor of being a non-marxist from the get-go. It is unproductive and the height of foolishness to do so, though it happens altogether too often on this and other Marxist lists, as I'm sure you know.
And to Charles: I really don't see why I need to authenticate what I say be recourse to either my marxist street cred or by recounting war stories about my employment history. __________
Charles: The implication that I indicated that you needed to "authenticate" in this way is false. See posts reposted today.
What I did was respond to your criticism of my post. There is no reference to your status or "identities" or authenticness in that post. It is copied above.
_______
But if it will make you happy, then as to the latter: Yes, I have encountered times when my job was in jeopardy. Long ago when I tried to organize a union in a branch of the food service industry and more recently when the mostly white feminist at a campus where I used to teach called me and a colleague on the carpet for talking about class and race too much in our classrooms. Apparently it offended them and made them feel bad (the students) that we taught about racism and class oppression.
As to the latter, my marxist credentials, I'll use shorthand and say that I share much of Doug's thinking on a number of issues, and I've interacted w/ Doug for a couple of years now so I think it is safe to say this. I'm probably less of a feminist than Doug, though that's because I haven't been keen on the mainstream versions of white, middle class feminism. And, I'm quite a bit less sympathetic to the pomos and poststrucs than is Doug. And, like Lou P, my profession means that I must keep an open mind about what you label as petit bourg academic scholarship for I find that it can be quite useful at times.
SnitgrrRl
SnitgrrRl
SnitgrrRl ____________
Charles Brown
Detroit