Pollitt on West

[Daniel F. Vukovich]

Rakesh or anyone else still interested in this thread:

Quickly and with a hangover:

I agreed that West's silence about power within the family -- i.e., power
vis a vis the subordination of women within the family -- is wrong.  I am
glad he was called on that by Katha Pollitt.  

In my view there was more than "a little personal history" in that column;
it thought there was too much, and -- moreover -- I think merely
"personalist" critiques are wrong, and smack of liberalism and
"ressentiment."  I think Pollitt's piece is uncomfortably close to this.
More specific examples would be this silly charge of opportunism,
spotlight-grabbing psychopathology, etc etc.  People are complicated, even
erstwhile academic-radicals.  I have not, imho, attacked Pollitt, and I do
not think she is racist, bourgeios, stupid, etc etc.  Far from it.  


My point was that NoI was a *potentially* progressive organization.   If I
am not mistaken, the whole point of them is that the US is racist, through
and through, and that the two parties, and whites in general, are not
really to be trusted as such, and so "the" African-American community needs
to come together, etc etc.  Call this the "form" of the organization, if
you will, and mark it off from the content of specific policies.  Surely we
can agree that there is nothing *inherently* sexist, etc about the NOI --
what the organization thinks or does is a matter of specific histories, or
in other words, of what gets *articulated* to what (in the Althusserian,
Hallian sense of articulation).  Again, we seem to be arguing about whether
or not association with NOI is, b/c of some of its conservative and/or
mistaken ideas, a "crime" or a "sin", so to speak.  

Finally: I was trying to suggest some reasons why West might well be
motivated to "go public," why this is a sharply double-edged practice, and
why West might associate or dialogue or "struggle" with such groups as NOI
or PK or the NRA or the SPCA, etc.  
The point is to change them.  Perhaps he fucked up and picked the wrong
ones.  You be the judge.  Here, I prefer being in the jury.  Simply put, I
think Pollitt should have at least tried to present the context of West's
decsions/actions, and address why he might want to "struggle" with them,
rightly or wrongly.   And then, by all means, rip into his benighted ideas
and his bad practices.   I think that would not only be nice, and fair, but
a bit more analytical.  To attribute his behavior merely to his psychology,
in one form or another, is I think reductive and vulgar.

coda: I think Kelly's post about this raises another really important issue
in regard to West and the NOI: its a black thing.  And what the NOI (or
AFDC, the March, the PK, etc.) means to African Americans will necessarily
be different than what it means to us outsiders. This is absolutely a fact
that needs to be negotiated in one's own analysis or judgments of NOI,
West, etc.   If you or Pollitt or whomever cannot see this, or if this
amounts to cultural relativism to you, then, short of an excursus on
epistemology, culture and history, there is nothing else I can say.

dishonestly yours,

Dan
 
----------------------------------------------------
Daniel Vukovich
English; Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory
University of Illinois
Urbana, IL 61801
vukovich at uiuc.edu
ph. 217-344-7843
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