Scepticism, Dogmatism, & _White Noise_ (was Re: 'Identity Politics')

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Jim Heartfield wrote:
>I like Francis Bacon's explanation of the difference between his own
>rational method and that of scepticism, which whilst at first appearing
>similar, differ in that the sceptics start with doubt and end with
>doubt, whereas Bacon begins with doubt in search of knowledge.
>
>When I cited this aphorism at a Radical Philosophy conference a few
>years back, the speaker, Gayatri Charkravorty Spivak said that I was a
>racist for embracing Bacon's method, which was premissed upon the
>colonisation of nature. Taken aback I looked around, and all these
>philosophy students were nodding knowingly as if this was a thoroughly
>profound point. IT wasn't that they thought they should beat me up or
>throw me out for being a racist, it was just a way of identifying all
>rational thought with colonialism and putting me in a box.
>
>Afterwards, a lecturer from Sussex (it might have been Peter Dews)
>sideld up to me and said that he applauded what I had said. So why
>didn't you stick up for me, I asked. 'It's not the right time' he said,
>as if dire results would follow.
>
>So all in all, I'm not prepared to give up the properly pejorative
>meaning of the characterisation 'political correctness', which
>definitely describes Spivak, and her audience, very well indeed.

I sympathize, but the term 'political correctness' doesn't get at the heart
of the problem.  Cliquishnes & unthinking appeal to postmodern 'common
sense' displayed at the conference you report here are indeed annoying, but
the problems lie in (a) their definition of science and (b) their
displacement of criticism from capitalism to 'modernity,' 'instrumental
reason,' etc., as you argued elsewhere yourself.

Yoshie