>let's take a step back: if, as you say, nazism began as the erasure of
>peoples defined as antithetical or disruptive of the nation and its 'pure'
>reproduction/reassertion (began in a sense as a eugenics directed against
>those deemed as abnormal), then isn't this racism?
actually no, eugenics isn't integral to fascism. as for the nazism of germany this isn't entirely accurate either. hitler was a eugenicist as were many others who followed him, particularly the Nazi doctors who saw this as part of the rational practice of science. but, within the nazi regime not everyone agreed with that sentiment. part of the problem, as with many analyses of the state in any of its ideological forms, is a failure to examine it as something other than a monolithic entity with univocal interests. even in the most rigid authoritarian regime there are structural sources of conflict and attachment to competing interests that make it unstable.
eugenics was what ultimately emerged but i would argue that it had more to do with the particular historical circumstances, the gearing up for war, the already rampant anti-semitism which began to heat up in the 1890s in europe and was conveniently deployed in an effort to retain greater political power and effect support for war. [see fwd on global fascism. btw don't agree w/ all therein. also demonizing jews as communists, soviets=jewish, communist --all very tightly wound together. also, see pretenses for invasion of poland]
> didn't fascism consist
>of the slogan of 'work, family, nation', and hence the depiction of
>citizenship and the purpose of work (sacrifice, duty, etc) within a
>biologised, of at least ethnicised, version of the national family?
certainly, i've said this before. but it isn't always the case and isn't necessarily now the case that this was/is the main focus, see fwd.
>but in
>another sense, weren't fascism and nazism marked by the fantasy of a
>harmonious nation where antagonism was relegated to the outside in the figure
as was colonial early nationalist US against barbaric, decadent, dying Europe {city on a hill}, the barbaric native americans, and 'wild, uncivilized nature.' perhaps more abstract but telling example, particularly when you speak of phantasy, as it is clear that early US nationalism was founded upon the domination of a wild nature to which humankind brought civility. nature that generic Other as i'm sure you know.
>of the Jew (esp as the Jewish banker and as the influence of
>cosmopolitanism), the communist (marked as irredeemably foreign, modernist,
>etc), the disabled (as degenerative of the national family and its ability -
>duty - to work), the gypsies (as a-national), gays (as likewise degenerate,
>cosmopolitan and a-familial), and so forth...? isn't this racism?
now here you start to stretch the definition of racism to the point of having absolutely no meaning. it becomes so unstable that anything and everything is racism. since it always bound up with nationalism as family in the above, then why not call it nationalism? or national supremacism? not a good choice because doesn't invoke right sentiments-- too easily associated with the pleasurable, the positive, right? if it is about work, then why not something evoking that? you see, it could be simply called anything.
now, an example above, w/ re to gays. would you call contemporary version of this racism? clearly, heterosexist oppression of g/l/b's was associated w/ nationalism and the normalization of heterosexuality. but, it is clearly dissociated from that context now because it operates in entirely different ways and is not at all about nationalism, except among the most virulent fringe groups, least here in the US.
i find this rather chaotic use of the term highly problematic *particularly* as it takes on a life of it's own and becomes dissociated from class analysis. now, i know that's not what you, ange, are up to. but, in the political context of academia today, far too many people are more than happy to dissociate analyses of oppression from class analyses, from an interrogation of capitalism.
and, just based on the evidence alone it's not clear that all fascisms have been or are racist in the sense you mean. and, in the sense you mean, all forms of the modern nation-state are racist in any event so it is *still* far too wishy washy for my tastes.
furthermore, another problem i see is that analyses of fascism based on european fascism are bound to the fact that these regimes were motivated by geographical expansion via war. so the virulence of the violence against Othered groups was ratcheted up in an effort to whip up support for war (again, the invasion of poland) are all fascist regimes today involved in waging war in an effort to expand their borders?
how
>is all this possible without racism? i.e.., it would seem to me that whilst
>it's not a commonplace to think of communists, gays, the disabled, and more
>recently, Jews, as a race, isn't this beside the point?
why is it besides the point. if racialization is based on false claims about phys/bio/gen traits then why reify it? why apply it to every form of othering that, at root, is really about capitalist exploitation, then, and about the globalization of capitalist exploitation, now? if we want to undo those claims regarding race, then why give legitimacy to it by applying it to everything? wouldn't it be better to use some other term that will reveal that the categorization and demonization of these Othered groups is based on imagined behavioral traits read as 'not belonging' --all of which is really a way to discipline people to accept the legitimacy of capitalism?
ultimately i really don't particularly care what anyone calls the phenom. what i do care about, though, is the slipshod use of these terms and the fascism= the case of nazi germany tendency in these debates. and i'm not exactly sure where i stand re balibar and your claims above. i've put forth arguments in the spirit of working through this issue--for my own benefit. i'm trying to be convinced in some sense, but thus far i'm not.
i guess too that i'd say that perhaps i'm thinking that what i see going on here is evidence of the aporia in the theoretical explanation for why racism exists. how do we get outta this place, ya know ange? entrapped in the present. suspended in time and yet imprisoned by the langugage of time.
weren't these people
>grouped together and targeted because of a definition of 'the German race'
>and an attempt to apply that concept to the real?
yes, but again, not all fascisms rest on this phenom.
the problem, ange, is that we need more refined concepts. balibar offers one which i'm still contemplating but really not quite comfortable with. and there is, of course, the problem here in the US of associating race with blacks, whereas everyone else has an ethnic identity--the problem of associating race with culture, understood anthropologically. the fiery disputes between various black scholars on the debate over matriarchy in the black family--whether cultural, the result of slavery/capitalist super-exploitation, or both is evidence of how difficult this notion of race as culture is to shake.
why? well, as i see it, it's because, while culture/identity is surely shaped by oppressive class relations, it is also surely a source of solidarity, pleasure, affirmation, a way of grounding one's self in a positive, affirming history and tradition, etc. a racialized identity has it's pleasures--and we can certainly see why sometimes, w/ re to black family debates, the dividing line in the debate is gendered with black feminist scholars tending toward the cultural analysis and black male scholars tending toward the slavery/capitalism analysis. [similar phenom among white feminists as well, though not as acutely. the conundrums are quite evident].
the above speaks more to a question you asked me awhile ago. don't ask exactly what it was but i think we were talking about class-as-culture in the multiculti education discourse.
>I've heard this before, but I don't really understand it. I've no doubt that
>fascism is violent, indeed Mussolini was very big on violence as building
>national character as I recall from somewhere. but how is it possible,
>desirable even, to think of fascism as more violent than other forms of
>racism?
ange, have you read iris marion young's work on the five faces of oppression? it's thought provoking. i think you said that you hadn't. but if you have, i'd be interested in what you think about this. she invokes cultural violence as one face of oppression and i think that fruitful.
it is precisely this sort of more nuanced analysis that i want to see more of. if you've not read it, i'll summarize it and post it.
kelley
>Angela
>---
>rcollins at netlink.com.au
>
>
>
“touch yourself and you will know that i exist.” ~luce irigaray