I seem to be using up my quota of posts, playing defense for the god squad -- an activity that people on both sides of the question should regard as pointless: divinity's probably able to take care of it/her/himself. (Which reminds me that I also haven't responded to Chris Doss' discerning comment on theological language and analogy.)
But diversity's another matter. Judging from the frenzied concern on campuses at least (or at least the campus that I know best, which has a long-standing contretemps over a native American mascot), diversity seems to need all the help it can get; but Michaels argues that this is a displacement (altho' he doesn't use the YA language), the affect arising from the effort to avoid doing anything about the reality of economic difference.
So I'm surprised that you're curious about "who he thinks he has to admonish" -- the academy seems to me in need of a good bit of admonishment. Putting aside for the moment the vagaries of he term "Left," I agree that the Left as defined as the members of this list (with exceptions) is clear on the matter of economic inequality. But what counts as "the Left" in the ideological institutions (universities & media) right now is just that collection of "liberals, democrats, etc. [who] have never been interested in economic inequality anyway."
BTW I've always liked Chomsky's suggestion that, used consistently, Left/Right means more/less democratic -- liberals want to democratize the polity and socialists, further Left, the economy as well; the problem (and Chomsky's point) is that such a usage would put the M-L Left well to the Right...
And I think that many people on the Left under any description have not really taken in Zizek's point that the pomo holy trinity -- gender, race, and class -- are not alike: the first two can in principle be solved by reconciliation, but not the third (exploiter/exploited), which requires the elimination of one of the parties (the class role, if not the physical elimination).
Michaels writes, "...we have started to treat economic difference as if it were cultural difference. So now we’re urged to be more respectful of poor people and to stop thinking of them as victims, since to treat them as victims is condescending -- it denies them their ‘agency.’ And if we stop thinking of the poor as people who have too little money and start thinking of them instead as people who have too little respect, then it’s our attitude toward the poor, not their poverty, that becomes the problem to be solved, and we can focus our efforts of reform not on getting rid of classes but on getting rid of what we like to call classism.”
There's a lot of that going around. --CGE
shag at cleandraws.com wrote:
> Carl (CGE) recommended Walter Benn Michaels, The Trouble with Diversity.
> I'd enjoyed the review, reposted below.
>
> I have some criticisms of the book --mostly I am curious who he thinks he
> has to admonish. That is, I think he's confused. Most folks who are
> lefties (as on this list) are and have been making these same criticisms
> for nearly two decades. I have. The rest? These are liberals, democrats,
> etc. and they have never been interested in economic inequality anyway.
> So, it seems like his book is kind of a wasted effort. The people who
> think like this aren't ever going to change their minds.
>
> but that said, who is this guy? I've barely heard of him and he makes
> $175k in Chicago? as a professor of English? at a public university? did
> the fortunes of the professoriate dramatically reverse in the last 8
> years?
>
> He acknowledges that he's doing pretty well for himself, of course, which
> was the point of the whole "about Walter Benn Michaels" chapter -- which
> was pretty funny in terms of a rhetorical tactic to deploy against
> critics.
>
> And CGE, I'm disappointed that you haven't responded!
>
> shag (artist formerly known as bitch)
> http://cleandraws.com
> Wear Clean Draws