[lbo-talk] Islam and socialism

[John Thornton]

Dennis Claxton wrote:
>> Carrol Cox wrote:
>>     
>>> There are too many Indians, not enough chiefs on the left,
>>>       
>> I really hate this phrase.
>>
>> John Thornton
>>     
>
>
>
> Even with the clever reversal?  Next we'll hear that the left should 
> have a pow wow to work things out.
>
> But, I think this is a good place to repost something I sent the 
> other day from Judith Butler.
>
>
>
>   
>> I think in the US we go around trying to target people who say 
>> racist things, and indeed there
>> are good reasons to do that, targeting people who say homophobic things,
>> holding them responsible for their speech. I think there are all kinds of
>> reasons to stop a person when they speak such things and say, for example,
>> `look, that's a racist act'. I think that's important. But I think a
>> politics that begins and ends with that policing function is a 
>> mistake, because for me the
>> question is how is that person, as it were, renewing and reinvigorating racist
>> rituals of speech, and how do we think about those particular rituals and
>> how do we exploit their ritual function in order to undermine it in a more
>> thorough-going way, rather than just stopping it as it's spoken. What would
>> it mean to restage it, take it, do something else with the ritual so that its
>> revivability as a speech act is really seriously called into question.
>>     
>
> <http://awayward.com/library/Philosophy/JudithButler/Judith%20Butler%20Interview.pdf>http://awayward.com/library/Philosophy/JudithButler/Judith%20Butler%20Interview.pdf 
>   

I however still simply hate the phrase and am generally happy to leave 
it at that.
The onus to begin a dialog on race relations every time I hear a racist 
remark would leave me little time to do much else.

Why don't white people make up goofy phrases about their own and leave 
everyone else alone?
How about "The bugs in my garden are more voracious this year than even 
whites!"
Yes, we all know similar phrases are actually used by minorities but 
only in an ironic way. I've never heard them used any other way.

John Thornton