I'm on the rag. :)
I don't like handwaving without evidence. I figure that I work pretty hard to provide evidence and everyone else can, too. I used to joke that this was what grad school was all about: excelling at the art of pretending you've read widely by parroting what everyone else said. Turns out there's some evidence for this when they trace typos and errors in footnotes and bibliographies. So, quote quotes and provide refs. As we've already seen, there's plenty of misinterpreation, so why should you count on me to interpret a text accurately?
If you want to label peole here as having certain views, then I think it's incumbant upon the speaker (typer?) to provide evidence so we can get to the bottom of things.
But, more than that, I learned through my work with the center for the study of citizenship that true progress in these sorts of discussions only happens when you have a common text. If it's just making claims about this or that, and no mediating object through which to ground those claims, you're lost. So, it's a lot more than being annoyed by sloppiness. I happen to think that grounding claims by ref. to common texts, films, etc makes for much more productive conversations.
>I usually disagree with Woj, but you have him wrong. He isn't saying there
>are lefties who say being poor is awesome. He's saying there are lefties
>who exempt the underlying population from historical materialist
>truth-telling.
I like your explanation of Woj's views better than he's presented them. And I'm glad he's finally being honest about who he's talking about. The refusal to name names is irritating. Why? Can't say what you really mean. it doesn't help to hide behind generalizations. Woj has been claiming that I do this for years and loads of explanation has to why I'm not hasn't made a dent. I still fluv him madly though. One of the reasons I like Doug is that you can have an intense disagreement with him and he even encourages those disagreements. He's fond of one of Cat's quips that she's not done writing a paper 'til she's figured out the questions to ask her answers.
Anyway, what you say makes more sense, but to accuse me of doing this is innacurate, you'd agree? Or no. Can you or Wojtek point out where I do this. I'd like to know, since it would help me understand how I can improve so as to say what I mean. Of course, if it just means never rejecting broad generalizations about groups of people that has no empirical support, then I can't agree to that. That would be betraying a discipline I love.
Bell Hooks and Alice Walker certainly don't exempt anyone, writing particularly about violence, sexism, internalized racism, homophobia, and so forth among black people. Hooks, in this essay, though, has the audacity to insist that any analysis of Gangsta rap is accompanied by of white male supremacist society within which gangsta rap exists. To do anything less is, in my mind, utter nonsense.
Speaking of, I mistyped when I spoke of Spivak. She criticized other post colonial theorists for valorizing the subaltern. Long complicated stuff, though, and it's not as simple as a romanitication, either. At any rate, here's hooks:
http://eserver.org/race/misogyny.html
Frankly, I fail to see how this para is an indication that she's letting anyone off the hook. I think you're only see her as denying human agency if you think that someone has to spend loads of time justifying themselves to you. Like making Noam spend loads of time explaining how much he loves the U.S. before anyone allows him to say something on national teevee.
heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeere's bell:
To see gangsta rap as a reflection of dominant values in our culture rather than as an aberrant "pathological" standpoint does not mean that a rigorous feminist critique of the sexist and misogyny expressed in this music is not needed. Without a doubt black males, young and old, must be held politically accountable for their sexism. Yet this critique must always be contextualized or we risk making it appear that the behaviors this thinking supports and condones,--rape, male violence against women, etc.-- is a black male thing. And this is what is happening. Young black males are forced to take the "heat" for encouraging, via their music, the hatred of and violence against women that is a central core of patriarchy. To see gangsta rap as a reflection of dominant values in our culture rather than as an aberrant "pathological" standpoint does not mean that a rigorous feminist critique of the sexist and misogyny expressed in this music is not needed. Without a doubt black males, young and old, must be held politically accountable for their sexism. Yet this critique must always be contextualized or we risk making it appear that the behaviors this thinking supports and condones,-- rape, male violence against women, etc.-- is a black male thing. And this is what is happening. Young black males are forced to take the "heat" for encouraging, via their music, the hatred of and violence against women that is a central core of patriarchy.
k