>What's up with this "oh but is it good for the left?" litmus test, anyway?
It's also not clear why this definition of the left is so transparent. I've known a good many people with 'left' objectives who found Marx academic, too theoretical, too difficult, incomprehensible, in need of translation for the people who it might help or support, and various related positions.
The easy dissemination of these criticisms of Butler and Homi Bhabha's writing as incomprehensible and useless among conservative media forums -- that execrable 'bad writing' release made it into our anything but radical Higher Education Supplement this week -- should give some of you caution I would think. I would add to the awareness that conservative forces within and around higher education are deliriously happy with criticisms of post-structuralist thought as useless and incomprehensible the comment that Butler and Bhabha were obviously chosen for their impact more than for their bad writing -- I could find very many 'worse' samples on the exact criteria provided by this 'competition' but it's better for their agenda to pick someone who has changed in some way the field of contemporary academic research.
But in any case, it doesn't seem to me to be difficult to accept that what is productive and challenging to established injustices is not the same in every situation. Judith Butler would not have been any help to my grandfather and will probably not help my next door neighbour. But for the thousands of people who pass through my department as students every year and who sometimes go on to take up positions where they are able to make some impact on those established injustices, Butler can be eye-opening, can be challenging, can be useful -- if those are your criteria.
>>We're talking *politics* here, gang -- not course credit, not tenure
>>track.
Then I'll give you an example of Buter's 'success' on the terrain of 'politics', if it will help clarify. An undergraduate student who I would in no way cast as a remarkable thinker and who in fact had expressed some for me quite disturbing opinions in earlier seminars declared herslef to have been absolutely shocked to realise, after reading Butler's essay on Larsen's _Passing_, that 'white' ideas of racial superiority needed closeness to someone who could be called 'black' and even that the idea of white at all relied on being able to say people were black. In Australia, as we currently live it, this seems to me a very important realisation.
>>More than two centuries later, people still quote and are moved by the
>>Declaration of Independence because its philosophical points could be
>>clearly understood: "We hold these truths to be self-evident..." etc.
>>What banner do you propose is suitable to rally under for Judith Butler?
They seem to be self-evident because they belong to a long philosophical tradition which pervades our dominant languages and social systems. Some of what 'Butler and her ilk' would challenge is that pervasive philosophical system where truths are 'self-evident' rather than contingent expressions of interest. Not all of what is expressed in the Declaration of Independence needs ot be thrown out, perhaps, but holding currently dominant truths to be self-evident is usually not conducive to social change.
Of course I'm sure that much of this has been repeatedly said in this debate. I am joining late, and somewhat behind. But I'll catch up.
Catherine