>A footnote that may be trivial but may be important. The point of
>departure for treating the "culture wars" as s distraction is calling
>them "culture wars" -- i.e., in effect identifying "culture" as a
>distinct realm of human activity. This is related to my parenthetical
>objection to your declaring your desire that this list bridge the / in
>"culture/econ," my point being that as soon as you recognize them as two
>different things you have confirmed the /, and no efforts to bridge it
>will succeed. You have to start with a unity and divide,not start with
>fragments and try to combine.
But, for as long as I've know Doug, which is near a decade now, he's never been saying that the two are separate. He's only argued that some variants of Marxism have pooh poohed looking at culture and the culture folks have dismissed Marxist analysis of economics.
What the hell was the long war that errupted over Roger Odisio's remarks about sex/gender other than the voice of a Marxist dismissing the 'sex stuff' as silly school girls. He even, as I recall, went so far as to say that, during a time when I was debating Habermas with Ken Mackendrick on this list as he prepped for exams, that all I ever talked about was sex. And then there was the fellow who created the Crash list who called me a 'trollope' and made snide comments about my interest in gender issues.
That kind of thing emanates from a left that, too often, thinks that feminists concerns with the way culture can be a site of contradiction -- and thus contestation and a potential space to find cracks and fissures in the "unity" -- is just a bunch of bogus horseshit.
Hell, we've even had men on this list tell us that women's work issues in the West are sooo nothing compared to what women in Afghanistan must deal with.
Bitch | Lab http://blog.pulpculture.org