On Jan 6, 2008, at 5:18 PM, Joanna wrote:
> My "critique" goes back to 1974 when I saw something like an emerging
> working class movement unwinding into many useless threads of
> identity.
I hear this sort of thing a lot and I'm not sure what it means. In 1974, second-wave feminism was still pretty young, and the level of gender consciousness was extremely low. Organized labor was largely the domain of grumpy, socially conservative white guys. Those with "identity" issues - basically everyone who wasn't one of those grumpy white guys - had something real to complain about. While we're certainly not post-race or post-gender or any of those other fanciful features of ObamaWorld, levels of awareness now aren't as low. As Kim Moody said years ago, after all those "identity" struggles, we now have the capacity to do class right. But we sure didn't when we thought of the "working class" as something unitary.
Doug