Charles Brown wrote:
>
> From: kelley
>
> -clip-
>
> Nunya is not duped by Walmart's machinations alone. Nunya's response
> illustrates what Doug means when he insists that it is at our peril we
> ignore or simplify "the degree to which people are complicit in their own
> subordination, and even come to enjoy it. Or, worse, don't even experience
> (work) as a compulsion or a form of subordination, but a pleasure." I think
> the below gets at what's at the heart of this perpetual debate over how
> ideology works.
>
> ^^^^
> CB: Yes, ever since our Judith Butler study group on this list, the
> phenomenon of complicity in one's own oppression has been established as
> existing. Who can ignore the "happy slave" who shucks and jives, grins and
> smiles, "yessa massa", Sambo. House slaves.
I think a different spin can be put on Kelley's post here (and perhaps the same spin, for that matter, should be put on "yessa-massa" slave behavior). I've mentioned before, I believe, the chapter in _Muscle and Blood_ dealing with a silver-mining town in Montana. The silver had a high lead content, and there was so much lead in the very air that residents who had never been in the mine developed blue lines in their teeth. Yet most of the townspeople were not willing to admit the mine was killing them. My response when I read this 35 years or so ago was that when the conditions that enabled one to live could not (apparently) be changed, it was probably rational to deny that they were also killing one.
I think most of Kelley's argument can be accepted _without_ accepting the label of complicity. The concept of willful ignorance simply makes no sense to me in explaining the popular support of u.s. imperialism, but that is a matter for another post.
See Kelley's post as merely _part_ of a description of the terrain on which working-class militancy must operate rather than as either an indictment or approval of Nunya's consciousness.
Carrol