> My objection to your commentary on race is that you treat blacks &
> whites _symmetrically_, i.e. _both_ as possessing significance
> comparable to the ideas of angels, witches, phlogiston, etc. I'm
> saying that only the idea of "the white working class" is a racist &
> anti-working class abstraction. I reject the symmetry, in other
> words.
>
> Yoshie
*******
No, I said race does not refer; in that respect it is like phlogiston. You're conflating skin color with identity politics. To the extent identity politics will be with us long after we recognize the irrationality of belief in races, so be it. The question is how do we exit from and/or transcend identity politics along the lines sketched out by Young and others? How do we stop the performative iterativity of institutional practices constituted by irrational beliefs "held" by individuals from reproducing?
To what, in a non-recursive definition, does "the white working class" refer? And who is telling the white workers that it's so? Ted Koppel? Mothers Against Drunk Driving? The construction workers in NYC telling themselves over and over? The economics profession? The KKK? The Independent Women's Forum? The Sierra Club? The World Wrestling Federation?
Ian
The irrational can serve the Empire as well as refute it. The irrational escapes calculation, and calculation alone must reign in the Empire. [Albert Camus]