Er, here " so long as we end up insisting on either the basic primacy of the essence of our concern relative to others' or on the secondary superstructuralism of the false essences of others" your essentialist position, counterposed to "we're not able to do any good work." your anti-essentialist position.
> Do you know the empirically
>substantive resesasrch and literature on anti-essentialism?
I know a lot of it, probably not near all. But this misses the point, and
it relates to what Carrol just posted, the onus is on you to present me with
the argument and convince me. I don't think it is my responsibility to go
out and read the exact things you have in order for us to come to exactly
the same understanding. If you can not convince me through a logical
argument then guess what, you haven't convinced me (this is also related to
your claim that I misread your note. Which seems to happen to you alot ,
huh?). Claiming some Superior reference list hardly makes your point. It
seems rather to undermine it.
On the broader question of essentialism, maybe you can explain to me how this works in practice. I think this is Reed's point about historicizing the struggles. An abstract academic understanding can surely be based on an unessentialized politics, but can actual practice? Do you consider the civil rights movement actions to be based in an essentialist politics?
>Have you a
>sense how folks who've been through don't have these ridiculous exchanges
>because they're stance is fundamentally beyond the ideas and politics of
the
>discreteness much less the dichotomous nature of any of these concerns?
Maybe this would answer my questions above, I don't know because it makes no sense. What do you mean by 'folks who've been through'? What do you mean by 'ridiculous exchanges'? Which concerns, and the discreteness and dichotomous nature of them, are 'these folks' 'fundamentally beyond'? Maybe you can write it again?
>My stance is, admittedly, a
>metacritique and its the metacritique that offers the way out of this
>stupid, repetitive and increasingly uninteresting conversation.
Please enlighten us all as to the way out of our stupidity and uninterestingness with _the_ metacritique, as you say you have. Or, are you better at just mentioning that you alone have the answer then you are at explaining it so people can understand?
Brad