Justin, jim and carrol,
justin wrote:
>of course. But there is a big difference between a sort of antiracism that
comes out of resistance to capitalism and that which comes out of capitsliam
itself. The first kinds "comes out of capitalsm," "bearing upon it the
birthmarks of the old society," etc., But also the spirit, at least of the
new society. In particular, it does not restrict itself to the idea that all
races are equally fit to be good workers or bosses and equally bourgeois
citizens of a liberal democracy that dares not challenge the rule of
property. On the contrary, an anatiracism that comes out of a movement has
the potential of challenging the property relations of the existing society
and its conception of citizenship.<
Agreed. So, when you write "the spirit, at least, of the new society", and "the potential of challenging the property relations of existing society", this is what i've been suggesting.
I should also repeat, since it seems you think i'm downplaying the possibility of either critique or opposition by (as you say) subsuming radical notions of equality and freedom into official ones, that I don't downplay the importance even of what you call official notions of such. In fact, I would say a speculative liberalism is preferable to a pragmatic liberalism for that very reason. Even whilst I assume that this 'official conception' -- as also a 'radical conception' -- emerges from within the contradictions of capitalist sociality, I do insist on the historical limits to such, and have been arguing against the amplification of such conceptions -- part of a capitalist totality as they are -- into the horizon of possibility or, in other words, their rendering in utopian terms. Moreover, not even 'official ideologies' are homogeneous or closed systems protected from their own collapse or movement -- though many have tried.
So, partly also in answer to carrol's and jim's query, a citation from the fat guy:
"the secret of the expression of value, namely, that all kinds of labour are equal, because and insofar as they are human labour in general, could not be deciphered until the notion of human equality has already acquired the fixity of a popular prejudice. This, however, is possible only in a society in which the great mass of the produce of labour takes the form of commodities, in which, consequently, the dominant relation between man and man, is that of owners of commodities" (_capital_, v1, chp1)
no doubt there are better translations than the progress press edition, but anyways...
> Angela writes: "there are real limits to how we might
> conceive of racism (and how to fight it) in the first
> place, whether it be the principle of equality itself,
> since all notions of equality presuppose a table of comparability,
> a universal standard, and in the more common ways of trying
> to avoid this problem still repeat that universal standard,
> but relegate it to form rather than content (ie, pluralism)."
>
> This is too condensed but sounds interesting. Could you
> expand it.
In part reply to carrol's question, I would think that this involves quite a number of things: how race is often defined, in some apparently anti-racist discourses and politics still, as an attribute of those who are subjected by racism, a corollary to the notion of identity as property perhaps; in the strategic responses which view the presence of differences as that which explains the incidence of racism rather than the construction of those differences as something which requires explanation...
Re the latter comments in that para, and the part that jim queried, i'm wondering, jim, if you have a critique of multiculturalism, what is such a critique founded on other than a critique of the depoliticisation of rules of exchange, communication, relation? If it's founded instead on the assertion of a universality, then this is also, by implication, the assertion that 'others' constitute a particularism, thereby once again depoliticising the construction of this universality.
What remains unthinkable in equality is the kind of difference that is not, at some point, rendered as versions of the same or as subject to the same rules. Which is perhaps why, to use another example, we tend to have debates over sexual difference that can't quite escape the choices of sexual difference versus sexual sameness, and at best, can only enumerate one, two many different sexes. Ie., a binary conception, or a sameness, or a pluralism.
Angela.