Yoshie on lbo-list, yesterday, had these comments, to which I'd add my assent. Yesterday, in introducing an article on post-WTO organizing, http://www.seattleweekly.com/features/0008/features-howland.shtml New Radical Seattle), I had this to say about PC words like classism, "One annoying thing to me, is the, "classism, " word. I've probably said before, but, class is a social relationship. Sure class exploitation and domination, incorporates a subjective, affect laden, dimension, but it's like saying the problem with capitalism is that it "disrespects" oneself and the communities one identifies with. One of the problems with PC discourse is that it can occlude power structures functioning in and through individuals who are always parts of larger social groupings, and implicitly promises that the renaming of identity groups will somehow, through some linguistic abracadbra, eventuate in the "enpowerment" (another ugly word) of the oppressed."
Comments, comrades on "classism" and "empowerment" as theraputic, moralistic, "feel good", apolitical, evasive, euphemistic...you can see these weasel words annoy me. I can just see a corporate diversity consultant using them!
Michael Pugliese
http://nuance.dhs.org/lbo-talk/current/#end Re: Re: Commodification of Dissent and the SI
>...And they dare to reduce capitalism to "classism"! As if
it were a matter of removing a false sense of superiority and criticizing
one another's privileges endlessly! Now, this party line has had a
deleterious effect on the tenor of political discussion. Carrol noted a
while ago: "I rather think this list should be renamed Uriah-Heep-talk.
Everyone is so 'umble and so insistent that everyone else be so 'umble."
Yoshie