[lbo-talk] Identity Politics, Single Issues and Solidarity

info at pulpculture.org info at pulpculture.org
Mon Aug 7 10:04:30 PDT 2006


I think you make the mistake of conflating carrol and yoshie with the entire left. just say who exactly the people are who reject humanism and moral positions. but to say that all leftists do seems disingenuous, just given the arguments on this list.

if, otoh, you would put me in that category, then I do think it's a case of talking past one another.

At 12:35 PM 8/7/2006, you wrote:
>At around 7/8/06 10:17 am, BklynMagus wrote:
> >
> > Whether or not such a social force exists, queers can never remain silent
> > when people are persecuted and oppressed for their sexual behaviors
> > (I would say all interested in progressive change, but as history has
> > shown sexual rights are disruptive for both the right and the left).
> >
>
>The last parenthetical statement is of particular interest to me.
>Recently, I was discussing with a civil rights activist, the recent
>bruhaha over a gay commentator's gripe against immigration reform
>(http://platosbeard.org/archives/71). In short, the complaint was that
>same-sex marriage should trump immigration as a left/liberal/Democrat
>issue. The person I was talking with, surprisingly, found this opinion
>unsurprising and offered his opinion that a significant segment of gay
>activism (and attitude) was "single-issue" driven.
>
>While watching Fahrenheit 911 the better half and I were unimpressed
>with (while entirely sympathetic to) the saga of the military mother
>Lisa Lipcomb [sp?] in the context of an activist with a moral position.
>Our opinion turned out to be quite different from that of others! While
>we considered her change of heart (or activism) a natural outcome of a
>contingent event (the loss of a son), and therefore not a moral stance,
>others found this personal reaction to be the very thing that placed her
>on high moral ground (I am not here addressing the entirely different
>point, which I agree with, that her personal loss lends her the gravitas
>and immunity to state what is true/right).
>
>To put it a bit brutally: its natural and understandable to be anti-war
>if you lose a loved one to it. It is natural to be pro-gay-rights if you
>are gay. And so on (and perhaps one has to be a non-human animal to ever
>feel empathy towards them). But such natural attitudes do not guarantee
>a progressive outlook. Rather, a progressive attitude a priori
>determines the consistency of such issue positions. (Zinn quoting Buffie
>Sainte Marie: I see visions not because I am an Indian, but because they
>are visions to be seen).
>
>But what of the Western Left? Either I do not understand their
>theorizing, or the left orthodoxy IMHO has been a bit clever on this
>front. Class (working class) analysis (struggle) has been cast not as a
>single-issue (identity) but as the mother of all issues. We are told (as
>I understand it): everything is and should be explained as [arising
>from] class issues. Morality, with its odour of religion, is an
>impediment to the "science" of this new Left, and seen by their view,
>rightly, as a patronizing hand-out.
>
>But without some such identity or issue based definition, what is a
>progressive attitude or cause or way of thought? I am of course implying
>in my words above that it is (a) not based on the identity of an
>individual or a group and (b) it is based on some universal notions of
>morality (that can be deductively ascertained without resort to
>biology). This I think can be defined in a non-circular fashion and can
>be loosely labelled by the term "humanism" (the Old Left).
>
>BklynMagnus writes, while calling on those interested in progressive
>change: "queers can never remain silent when people are persecuted and
>oppressed for their sexual behaviour". Indeed, queers being those very
>same people, would be cowards not to do so (though such cowardice would
>be understandable given the violence that they are met with). As someone
>interested in progressive change himself, I assume he would also write,
>outside this context, "queers can never remain silent when people are
>persecuted and oppressed" ... period. That would make (or keep) them
>progressives.
>
>Thoughts?
>
> --ravi
>
>--
>Support something better than yourself: ;-)
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