[lbo-talk] Race and class

[Alan Rudy]

Beware the ecological fallacy... Spivak gave what was by far the most
incomprehensible presentation I ever sat through at UCSC in 1990 or so and,
perhaps, the most crystalline-yet-relational presentation I ever sat through
in 2002.  Sometimes we're good, sometimes we're bad, sometimes we're cranky,
sometimes we're sympathetic, sometimes people just set us off for all sorts
of reasons.  I'd expect that many of us are better in print than off the
cuff and that sometimes we're better, even in print, than we are at others.
I know that a few times it has turned out that I wrote something pretty
flawed because I hadn't yet figured out what it was I was really concerned
about, or ought really to have focused my efforts on.

Me, I have a long history of being most upset (and incoherent) when I know
someone is wrong, and I know where they are wrong, but I can't formulate
exactly what I think is right.

What I appreciate about the WBM exchanges is that the conversation has
clarified for me 1) that I was right, if overwrought, 2) other places I
could/should have seen him go awry, and 3) how hard it is to work through
the many valences of this stuff.  Thanks for your help, especially to those
who wrote multiple, engaged paragraphs combining intellectual, political and
personal elements.

On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 10:15 AM, James Heartfield <
Heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:


> "Despite this analysis, Spivak doesn't lapse into stupidities about while
> privilege or male privilege."
>
> I once made the mistake of querying Gayatri Spivak on the difference
> between scepticism and reason, quoting Francis Bacon. The upshot of her
> reply was that Bacon was a racist imperialist, and so was I for quoting him.
>
> Overall, I am afraid to say, Spivak came across like a bi-polar bag-lady.
> She read at furious speed from a well-thumbed (curling in fact) A4 exercise
> book dense passages (written in green ink, with triplke underlinings
> throughout, most likely) then flicking backwards a few pages to read out
> another passage, then forwards a few more to read yet more - giving the
> impression that it did not matter that much in which order the thoughts
> came, which it didn't, because they were all unintelligible.
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