Sometimes, people are talking about a shared identity born out of oppression. The idea comes for Kojeve's reading of Hegel: the slave is closer to nature than the master. As such, the slave must understand how to master nature to grow food, raise animals, cook food, make clothes, build shelters. The slave knows her reality and the other slaves who live in that same reality. But she must also understand how the master's world works -- in order to survive in that one too. (The master, on the other hand, doesn't have to know anything about how to eke a living from nature.)
This is why you sometimes get the sense from people that they believe the identity of the oppressed -- their worldview, their morality, their culture -- is superior to that of the oppressors. People believe the oppressors have more knowledge about the world -- having to know both their own world and that of the oppressor. Hence, superior. On this view, there is something lacking, possibly a little sad, about the oppressor, aloof and detached from the world, probably incapable of surviving without the oppressed to grow food, cook it, etc.
It's the basis upon which people come to snarl about the worldviews, morality, and culture of the white, upper middle professional-managerial strata. Whatever they value -- art, music, literature, the way they decorate their homes, the clothes they wear -- all of it is derived for a kind of sad world where they don't truly _know_ the entirety of the world. They only know their slice of it. And that slice of the world is also upheld as THE reality, since the oppressors also get to shape and define social reality for themselves and everyone else. And they don't even realize that -- or so this view has it.
This is why early variants of identity politics were founded on the idea that we had to find the subject of history. The subject was supposed to be the working class for, like the slave, the working class was closer to nature and had a more complete view of reality: the slave understood his reality and the reality of the master. This is a perspectival theory of knowledge in which the subject of history, once it comes to understand all this, will see the injustice and seek to right the world.
But if the subject of history wasn't the working class, which disappointed left intellectuals when it was incapable of grasping its role in history, what would be the true subject of history? If the working class couldn't see the whole of reality, why not? Probably it was because they weren't as marginalized from the world of the oppressor as people thought. Perhaps they identified with the oppressor? Maybe the subject of history had to be yet another group that was more marginalized from the world of the oppressor? The search was on for ever more marginalized groups. For the Frankfurt School it was marginalized intellectuals. With Marcuse, it was the most marginalized people on the edges of society. Under Marcuse's influence, and the actually existing colonialist struggles in the third world, it was colonized people's. > Black Power Movement > Women's Liberationist Struggles > Lesbian Liberation struggles > Black Women's struggles > Black Lesbians (Combahee River Collective's statement) >
The interesting thing is, of course, is this morality play is woven into popular culture. It's the stuff films and novels are made of. They are often famously about the well-to-do person who has no idea how "the other half lives", sometimes also about men who are so wrapped up in careers, they have no idea how their lives are made possible by the labor of others, sometimes about how the oppressing class, limited in knowledge as they are, aren't as smart and ambitious as the oppressed (Working Girl comes to mind).
But you can see how tracing the different food stuffs eaten by republicans v democrats is part of this morality play, yes? If republicans represent the views of the oppressor class (even if they are not actually the oppressing class) then their culture, values, tastes, etc. are limited, reflective of a kind of sad, detached, cut off from reality world view. It's perspectivally limited and thus inferior. Democrats, since they are supposed to be respresenting a view closer to and supportive of the oppressed will eat foods that are reflective of a richer reality, one more reflective of how the worlds works -- supposedly reflective of an understanding of all the labor required to created the perspectivally limited reality of the oppressors. So it's cultural values, tastes, etc. are going to be superior, relatively speaking. not perfect, of course, but better than that of the republicans.
Well, that's all I have time for now. There's more, since not everyone wants to think only in terms of a shared identity born of being oppressed -- which would be what identity movements such as the Black Power movement were about, but what also animates cultural feminism and so forth. but later.
shag
-- http://cleandraws.com Wear Clean Draws ('coz there's 5 million ways to kill a CEO)