>
> On Oct 11, 2009, at 2:44 PM, Carrol Cox wrote:
>
> Focus on individuals fucks up political discussion, almost always.
>>
>
> I gotta agree with you on this. Michaels' original point - that big capital
> has entirely assimilated the diversity agenda, a point to which the entire
> Obama phenomenon is related, and how a lot of the received wisdom about how
> capitalism "needs" racism is badly in need of updating - has been lost in
> all this effort to prove him an asshole, or to search his book for
> incriminating passages.
>
> No, Doug, it is exactly the opposite and any kind of honest reading of our
posts would make that obvious. His point hasn't been lost on us, we agree
with it. Each of my first few posts explicitly stated that the meta-argument
is the right one - but I didn't belabor the point because - as Shag, Joanna,
others and I have all argued - the rhetorical style, God-trick superiority,
and empirical disinterestedness of Michaels' positions undermine his
capacity to convincingly make that argument.
If his rhetorical style were more open, if his perspective was transparently situated rather than invisibly Apollonian, and if he didn't ignore and collapse a myriad of really politically important levels of analysis then he'd have written much more like Adolph Reed - who makes the same argument (one just about all critics of Michaels have noted their appreciation of) without the sneering dickishness.
If you and some others had chosen to respond to the arguments we made rather than post dismissive and belittling one and two liners perhaps their wouldn't have been the need for discovering the myriad incriminating passages in his work. Why isn't it possible that the major point he want to make is fine but that he largely fails to make it (and especially fails to make it in a manner that's going to get anyone to listen) by screwing up the project by making it really badly and undermining the whole project? And why hasn't a single thing about his clear dismissiveness of structural racism and sexism, much less the ongoing reality of personal racism and sexism, appeared to have any impact on those defending him? Is defending his poorly made meta-point so important that its many failings in this incarnation and the subtle reality of this stuff has to be pushed aside? Is it simply because I called him a prick and delicate sensibilities are offended? If Shag, Joanna, others and I are not enemies of the left, did you make an argument to that effect to Reed? Wouldn't doing so mean taking our passionate but pretty carefully-constructed arguments seriously?