[lbo-talk] Progress and Cariucature (Was Re: Catholicism. .

[shag carpet bomb]

James Heartfield writes:
>Well, Hegel's Master-Slave dialectic makes a good argument why even the
>slave-owners' point of view also has its disappointments. The master has
>subordinated the other to his will, thereby showing that he values honour 
>more than mere animal existence (the surrendering slave demonstrating the 
>opposite, that he prefers existence to honour). But the master is only 
>honoured by .... a slave. He has esteeem in the eyes of people for whom he 
>has no esteem, a situation that is ultimately unsatisfactory.
>
>Worse still, the further development of the relation between the two 
>revolves around the slave's meeting of the master's appetites, so that, 
>perversely, the master reduces himself to the animal status of collection 
>of appetites, while the active principle (always in denial of its own 
>agency) is in truth the slave, whose labour transforms the conditions of 
>existence to meet the master's appetites.
>
>Hegel goes on to argue that the actual development of the forms of 
>self-reflection stoicism, cynicism, skepticism and christianity [I might 
>have that list wrong] are all succesively higher attempts to deal with the 
>problem of un-freedom, which seek freedom on the intellectual plain, 
>through doubt about the world, self-abandonment and finally freedom in the 
>other realm of God's Kingdom and so on. Through the slave's reflection on 
>his or her condition of slavery, true freedom, freedom that is more than 
>mere subjugation of the other can be imagined (and after being imagined, 
>realised).
>
>Maybe it is just a pretty tale, but I tend to think there is something to it,
>however idealised.
>
>Certainly the fundamentally dissatisfying experience of lordship over 
>others who are not themselves worthy enough to enjoy their esteem is a 
>common theme in literature

Yeah, and to answer someone's question -- can't recall who as my email 
service has been flakey -- while _Marx_ might not have derived a morality 
located in the position of slave, followers certainly did.

For instance, they have taken the position of being incapable of (and thus 
alienated from the ability to) feed, clothe, shelter oneself is not a 
desirable position to be in, and in fact it is morally superior to be the 
slave who is close to nature through his/hir labor and thus has a superior, 
more objective understanding of how the world works. Where the master can 
only know the world from his/her POV, the slave must know the master's POV 
as well as his/her own, PLUS the slave, being close to nature, has superior 
grasp natural processes.

Thus, knowledge derived from the Master's POV is not just partial, but 
tainted by power, which is of course bad.

Thus, anything seen as derived from the subject position (structural -- not 
individual) of white, heterosexual, professional-managerial strata, 
able-bodied male is not just partial, but tainted by power. it is, IOW, 
always about maintaining that structural power of whiteness, 
heterosexuality, able-bodiedness, professiona-managerial status, 
masculinity (as social process, structure)

the slave morality in some strands of identity politics flows from that 
interpretation, which inspired so much of the theorizing coming out of the 
new left.

You can see this very clearly in the Combahee River Collective statement, 
but it also comes out of feminist engagements with epistemology -- nicely 
categlogued by Alison Jagger in Feminist Politics and Human Nature.

"let's be civil and nice, but not to the point of obeying the rules of 
debate as defined by liberal blackmail (in which, discomfort caused by a 
challenge is seen as some vague form of harassment)."

                                    -- Dwayne Monroe, 11/19/08

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