>
>
> shag carpet bomb wrote:
>>
>> alan rudy wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> also, one of the things that chapped my ass about his book was at
>> the
>> end.
>>
>> he says that things like whether you eat velveeta or brie is, sure,
>> probably a marker of "class". there are tastes associated with
>> various
>> social strata.
>>
>> and he can't be painful, he says, to be made fun of for liking brie
>> or
>> country music or what have you.
>>
>
> I can't construe the syntax of that last sentence. And what sense
> does
> "he can't be painful" make?
yeah. my bad. Michael's argument in the last chapter of his book, which is a spirited attempt to disarm his attackers by attacking himself first, which I found rather clever. He knows, that as $175,000.00 professor, idiots will call him out for being rich.
so, first he points out that such an attack would be ad hominem. Saying that he has no basis for saying anything because his salary makes him suspect, excellent example of ad hominem.
So, don't do it says Michaels.
next, he blabbers on about how he doesn't really feel rich at all anyway. He's not nearly as well off as a lot of other people in the top 3% or 1% (depending on whether you count his wife) of income earners in the country. In fact, he actually feels a lot closer to the median income wage earner who makes ~$44k.
And then, if you don't buy any of that, then he goes on to *try* to attack anyone who tries to apply a cultural analysis of class.
Then, he yammers away about the stupidity of a cultural approach to class.
It is utterly absurd, he says, to think that it matters that there are cultural markers of class. If people pick on you because you like velveeta, so the hell what?! The fact is, brie *is* better, and Michaels agrees. There really are things that are better than others: taste better, smell better, feel better, are better for you.
It really *is* better to desire a Paris vacation over a Las Vegas vacation. If people make fun of you because of it, that is no big deal.
What really matters, in the final analysis, is that it's all about money. Do you have the resources to have a choice to go to Paris and not Las Vegas? that's the kind of world we should want.
That is why Voyou said that his approach is an analysis of * inequality*. It is decidedly NOT a marxist analysis.
Now, I know you, Carrol, do not like Marxist-based cultural analyses of class, so don't bother to go there. You will never convince me otherwise.
But, here's a thought experiment. Replace the example of paris v. las vegas, brie v. velveeta with cultural markers of race.
It is no big deal that people make fun of you for your way of speaking (Ebonics). It is no big deal that people make fun of you because you smell "ethnic". It is no big deal that people make fun of you because you wear big gold hoop earrings. it is no big deal that you can't find clothes that fit your waist to hip ratio. it is no big deal that you never see people who look like you in the major media. it is no big deal that people think it's quaint that you like watermelon and fried chicken, collard greens and grits and don't like the finer things in life."
etc.
Well, it does matter. it is the normative demands of our daily life that are what comprise what marilyn frye called the bird cage of oppression. (look it up on google. i've posted it here many times)
that bird cage isn't the same across race, class, gender, ethnicity, disability, sexuality, but the basic principle is there: it is a million tiny bars that interlock and constrict people. It is this structural oppression, which operates primarily through NORMS that we take for granted and that we tend to thing are normal, unquestionable, given, that upholds this system. When it comes to class, all of them and a system of class oppression (9 know, I know you disagree) that forms the system of oppression that makes capitalist exploitation not just effective, but makes it work at all.
The problem with Michaels is that he has a reductionist account of what goes on in universities. it's especially egregious because he keeps calling out "leftists" as the source of the problem.
They end up supporting neo-liberalism. He's got that quite wrong. Most leftists (radicals influenced by Marx, who are marxists, or heavy users of Marx) DO make very sophisticated criticisms of the very phenom to which he points. The people who do what he's talking about ARE the neo-liberals, the liberals, the pwogs, etc.
This people unabashedly DO NOT care about capitalism.
In his talk with Doug he says something about some group being worried that blacks were overrepresented. so, Michaels says smugly, do they just want to make sure it's all proportional to race?
Uh. Yes. In fact, they do. What planet does he live on.
They have no interest in dismantling capitalism.
And, as far as I can tell, I don't see where Michaels has such an interest either. That or he can't be arsed to read up on the literature in which he claims to situate his argument, and learn that there is a way to say what he's saying, as well as advance a (not the) marxist conception of class, without reverting to the Liberal concern for "inequality" -- as opposed to exploitation.
In other words, the shorter shag:
Michaels equates class with strata. Class is relative to him. Class is like a 7 layer bar, each strata rests on top of the other and, as such, it has no impact on the other. They are not internally related.
> I think if you are going to go beyond disagreeing with an author to
> attacking him personally, a certain precision & formality of style is
> called for.
I don't think I'm attacking him personally. I'm examining his argument, now, to explain exactly *why* i think that, while I agree with much of his argument, there is something about it that is superficial. It is no surprise to me that people read him and think he's less than sincere when he claims that he really does believe in gay rights, women's rights, civil rights, the struggles of people of color, disability rights, and so forth.
shag