are we talking a vulgar marxist economism in terms of theory? [which, it seemed to me, was the heart of the problem in the ever-endlessly recurring debates over the labor theory of value . quite hilarious to read some folks here talk about how much it 'costs' to get a worker to the line, the cashier counter or the cublicle by talking about how much it costs to feed her. as if that's the entirety of what's involved ! yes, yes, i do know that y'all did try to stave off critique by gesturing toward the limitation of your analysis. but....i'd like to know why the hell it's so important? no one ever answered me last summer as to what such hair splitting had to do with the price of cheddar cheese in wisconsin.
OR
are we talking political strategies [and i'd argue that how you theorize and critique the social is conceptually related [that is necessarily related] to the way in which you formulate strategies for social change. [see of course horkheimer, habermas, fay, etc]
OR
are we talking people who are pragmatic in their assessments of what might work best in terms of where to throw our energies, how to formulate strategies for coalition building?
unfortunately i think that wojtek often formulates his criticisms poorly be/c what i understand him to be saying is the same thing i often say: there is something fundamentally impoverished about some contemporary theorizing which insists on conceiving of class as a cultural category --wholly about identity, about what it 'feels' like to be working class or what have you. it's not that gender and race/ethnicity are 'merely cultural' --surely they are not!--but i suspect that such analyses woud favor, say, a class/race affirmative action program as opposed to what we once had --one based on gender/race. i fail to see how that's a problem.
and forthermore, for butler fans what would a perfomative politics "look like" with regard to class? does anyone honestly think that the same kinds of 'gender bending' political strategies of ACT UP, which throw assumptions about the naturalness of gender into question, are going to "work" with regard to a class politics. when i do a performative politics of class identity on this listserv for my own narcissistic delight i hardly imagine that i'm disrupting anyone safe, protected contexts. and i seriously doubt that a mass-based movement formulated along those lines would make a diff either.
do we really "perform" class in the same way we perform gender? and what about race.
as i complained a couple of weeks ago, butler completely ignored class and race in Gender Trouble, valorizing voguing etc but failing to recognize that their gender bending was all about performing wealthy feminity --they dress up in gowns and jewels, not nurse's scrubs.
the cult like worship of butler, at least when i was in grad school courses, was annoying in so far as, like spivak, she was worshipped and seemingly beyond critique --- for if you mentioned any critique in terms of the limitations of her politics as problematic re class you were instantly branded as some sort of vulgar marxist economist. it's not sexy to perform class, but it sure is sexy to perform race, gender [of course, all done as if those images of identity are neutral wrt class!]
finally, thanks katha for finally putting into words exactly what the problem with her writing is. fact is, i read portions of her diss as an undergrad [a prof went to grad school with her]. that was fairly accessible. so, perhaps you could tell me, since i've only ever worked with two editors. don't the editors play some role here? i realize that i've worked with folks whose aim was specifically to publish for a wide audience, so our goal was to be accessible --so the editors were tough. so is it that different when it comes to academic press publishing?
otherwise, i'm ambivalent wrt her writing. i hardly imagine that accessibility will mattermuch in the end. who cares? jargon is unavoidable and the bane of all academic disciplines. i think it is disingenuous to imagine that your pushing and pressing the liminal spaces between ossified academic boundaries and hierarchies only to reinscribe them youself with some blurb about how that's the only way i can write about this. blah phooey.
there's an interview on line in which her speaking voice makes it fairly clear what she's up to in her writing. the interview is at www.theory.org.uk
oh and carrol, what's interesting is that you often argue that we ought to theorize out of our politics. well, that's exactly what butler did in gender trouble. her ideas evolved out of the debates in the feminist movement and from the politics of the queer community.
kelley