i didn't tell you what the women in the class said. i refused to answer that and figured it might be better, were you really interested, to read people who are pissed off. translated through me, it's a lot different i'm sure. and, further, if you read those women, you'll also learn that my job, as art once told Yoshie, is to educate other whites about racism, etc. and I'm also supposed to move over and shut up and let women of color speak for themselves instead of telling the story for them. that means all kinds of things, including encouraging others to read their work.
it was a prefatory explanation about why i was sending it--it was an article i was thinking of when i typed an answer to you. i'd thought about posting it to you then.
women on this list were asked a long time ago to explain what feminism was all about, after feminists writers got some cheap shots from men who hadn't actually read the feminists under consideration. those who hadn't read feminism at all asked women to explain it for them. I believe Frances told him, "go to the library". she told him that she wouldn't for exactly the reason Yamato gave.
back then, at the birth of this list, about 8-10 months into 1998, it was quite obvious to women on this list that, as Frances once said in a post, "Ignore this, it's about women, so therefore trivial and irrelevant...". Her reaction was my immediate reactions, "fuck off, buddy, do your own work." However, since i remembered those days in grad school--walking out of classes where many of us were in tears dealing because it was hard dealing with our racism, classism, hetero/sexism--i thought i'd try to explain why people feel that they should not do others' work for them, etc., i also expressed some ambivalence, just as you do.
as for your concerns about my tone and style, i'd like to help with that, but i'm not sure what the problem is. i can understand, i've seen people accuse yoshie of the same and when they've accused her it's hard not to wonder if one can't be called on the same thing as she's called on. in the end, though, when someone bothers me like that, i just filter them. some people love yoshie, others can't stand her. i have my own list, i learned a long time ago, some people love me, some can't stand me. some even dislike me to the point of stalking me. i get over it and i'm sure i'll get over your dislike of me--until and when you can make your complaints specific so i can learn from constructive criticism.
At 03:51 PM 12/5/01 -0500, Seth Ackerman wrote:
>And must you then pause again to apologize for descending into the Toilet
>Bowel of Comparative Oppressions?
The TBoCO's is about the problems with a "more oppressed than thou..." discourse.
and while you don't like the deragatory phrase and felt it was directed at you, it was not. i was talking about how i felt about comparing oppressions. my comment before the comma was to say that, "i, too, don't know what to do about the issue...it's difficult, complicated, messy..."
>After a while, doesn't that kind of "discourse" get a little choppy?
Ace Cockburn seems to have the same problem: it's a style issue, apparently.
I had a stylistic suggestion already, when i wrote that you might have foregrounded the issue of sexism as a problem elsewhere, as i suggested with an example of how you could have framed the discussion: "again, to speak to those topics doesn't require relativism. example, "i'm not saying that rape (or whatever you are speaking of) doesn't occur in our own country or elsewhere, ...."
as i suggested the first time around: it's the cynical use of concerns about gender oppression on the part of men (and women) who don't otherwise give much thought or political practice to the issue of gender oppression in general. so, following Gloria Yamato, the answer is in practice--individual and political, at both the emotional and institutional levels of ou r lives. one can pursue the issues in your work--if at all possible, and one can do so by attending to them in one's interactions, as well as pursuing anti-racism, anti-sexism, etc in one's political practices. one can learn, educate oneself, etc. as in Yamato's _Something About The Subject Makes It Hard To Name_ which i've posted excerpts from already.
kelley
Charles, Charles, Charles:
> >>Charles --Durkheim-- Jannuzi wrote:
> >>I think this is the title--it's one of Kelley's portmanteau pile >>ups in
>which her discourse attempts to swallow the world.
>
>No Durkheim me, since I completely reject the idea that sociology has a
>legitimate, distinct subject matter or that sociology as 'science' could
>ever be about irreducible social laws that predict the interactions of
>social 'objects' (ditto economics).
you've advanced a durkheimian organicism.
you sound like durkheim.
you've also advanced a structuralist position by making claims about a lawlike behavior where humans and societies act in certain kinds of ways because they are naturally inclined toward an equilibrium state.
you sound like durkheim.
the position you advanced when addressing doug was a position that suggested that things all work out in the end because of this natural equilibrium state all humans and human societies strive for.
i have a problem with that since it ignores the way in which the US, for instance, is "waaaaaaaaaaaay out there" and manages to control that process for its own ends. as i pointed out already, if you want doug to accept that the AlQ and the Taliban are going to chill eventually; then you should also expect that the same story should be told to those who are the objects of US aggression.
"don't worry, everything will work out and they will stop dropping 2000lb bombs on you soon because they can't keep up this level of anti-social pathology forever. there, there now, let's have some tea."
in other words, organicism actually subsumes individuals and history to the imperatives of the law=like drive toward equilibrium, wipes them right out of the picture.
as for society as a social object, well there ain't one, true. but there ain't one for the natural sciences either.
your position, too, creates an object: the one that is driven by law-like tendencies of movement toward that equilibrium state. it is natural, but no less created by you (and others, yes sociologists, too) in order to observe and make claims about its lawlike regularity than does durkheim or mead or dorothy smith create their object of social inquiry.
>Not all organicist approaches are 'structuralist' in the social
>scientific sense. Though Durkheim was clearly a structuralist, I'm not at
>all clear about his organicism.
the body overheats, it sweats. the body is cold, the body shivers. too much anti-social pathology, then people gotta reproduce and stop killing each other.
>My philosophy of social science might be more akin with biological
>reductionism, which we find even in post-structuralism.
nice assertion, maybe you could stroke it a little instead of just sticking it out there.