What is the name of the book you are writing ? I want to make an advanced (privileged) order.
Charles
>>> Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> 01/27 2:01 PM >>>
Frances + Kelley:
>> I tend to be a bit suspicious when I hear leftist academics insisting that
>> teaching makes them a part of the working class. I wonder if they are
>> perhaps making this claim simply to deny their own privileged position.
>
>i'm suspicious too - best to be suspcious of most things, especially our own
>presentations in a context where to be working class is often defined as a
>mark
>of authenticity, immediate access to the truth of the matter, etc.....
Speaking of suspicion, I'm suspicious of the return of repressed privilege in so many talks on (renouncing) privilege in left circles, of both pomo and marxist kinds. If I were a Nietzschean, I'd say that it's a way of extending one's power over the unprivileged by displaying benevolence. Maybe all neoconservatives are crypt-Nietzscheans at heart, and that is why they are so good at needling lefties of all kinds by saying, 'well, liberalism [in which they include marxism, postmodernism, etc.] is at heart a cunning will to power.' However, I detest this Nietzschean take; Moreover, I think it is incorrect.
So taking up a Foucauldian position, I might ask, 'what incites lefties to endless talks about admitting and renouncing privilege? What are the conditions of possibility for statements on privilege? What are their effects?' My provisional answer to this Foucauldian series of questions is that talks on privilege, when conducted by leftists (especially vis-a-vis other leftists), have much to do with the reinforcement of ascetic morality that imprisons working-class bodies in 'middle-class' souls, though that is not the only effect.
Let's not forget Judith Butler. What of the question of refused identification that produces melancholia? Are all these malancholic and yet often aggressive talks on privilege not produced by (repressed) desire for (refused) identification with the working class? Aren't flame wars on left e-lists products of cholic/melancholic performance of 'middle-class guilt/privilege'? Now moving out of the Butler space, I ask, 'what makes this performance so compelling for the educated members of the working class?'
Yoshie