> Ok. so you don't think structures are real? What about the structural
> racism/sexism (you even place class in structural terms sometimes) you go
> on
> about? This was actually my point before that you did not understand. Is
> it just that you don't like it when people talk about class as a structure
> as opposed to other 'identities' or 'subjectivities'? Then you use gender
> stereotypes, or identity, to disarm most people (not me ;)) by showing how
> it can hurt too. Anyway, you made me laugh and I guess that is something.
>
> Brad
>
now THAT's manly man politics, right there... unsubtle, unsympathetic and about smashing (snidely, and with superabundant superiority [that slap about Shag "go{in'} on about" stuff was genuinely meant to be disarming ;-}, I'm sure) rather than trying to figure out where someone is and working from there...
while she's more than capable of responding herself...
could it possibly be that Shag doesn't think you can smash structures qua structures, that structures don't exist - except as abstractions - beyond their everyday, and never straightforward, reproduction... yeah, yeah, yeah, we can point to clear instances of all sorts of moments where structures can be seen in their reality... now what? The reason, I think, that Doug is driven mad by the anti-racists so much is not because there isn't racism, personal and structural, it is that race and racism is all they can talk about and how they see everything else... if you start down the structures are real road you either have to engage in some kind of scholastic project of cataloging structures of oppression until you've come up with all of them or, and possibly at the same time, you have to engage in a ranking of them - with those that are most really real at the top (or serving as "the base" to other "superstructural" phenomena) so that a really manly man's politics can take on the most essential structures, leaving the more epiphenomenal ones to tumble in the more real one's wake...
each and every one of the examples she has provided of her own activism, and that which she appreciates from what she reads, points to folks taking on immediate social problems, people - even social movements - don't take on and smash structural classism, racism, sexism, militarism, homophobia, isolationism, ideology, etc., they take on real, complex, overlapping (Shag likes "intersectional") and indeterminate social problems with whatever ideas they have, tactics they can generate and collectivities they can hold together...
When you were working on CSAs and the like were you directly taking on any, or many, of the structures above in your daily work? There are agroecological structures, no? There are a range of niches in the political economic structure of agrifood systems, no? There are fairly divergent patterns of class, race and sex/gender relations on different kinds of farms and food systems, no? Beyond the absolutely central importance of social structures as materialist abstractions from the always contingent realities of any particular locale, problem or struggle, do you focus on the structures, or a structure, in a particular effort or do you focus on local conditions in wider contexts, selecting people, places and opportunities to apply pressure?
Is the idea to smash primary structures or to build complex movements? If you start with the former you tell everyone else they're concerns are secondary, at best (and that you know best and they don't)... how many foodies do you know who've done that? I know a raft of environmentalists and foodies who just drove all their potential friends and allies away... If you - collectively - start with the latter, and are lucky enough to be able to build out, and build out some more, and have others build on and morph your collective, smashing structures takes care of itself so long as you keep them in mind, in tactics and in anticipation.
Shag's no friend of identity politics, as any even cursory reading of her posts for the last three months makes clear... she just thinks its a sure loser politically to assume that all people who appear to be engaged in it are unsophisticated, immovable, and intransigent distractors from more "real" politics - at best - and neocons in disguise - at worst.