[responses to Jordan Hayes, Doug Henwood, Somebody Somebody]
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On May 9, 2011, at 7:19 PM, Jordan Hayes wrote:
> // ravi says:
>> I no longer understand the usage of the word ‘reject’ ...
>
> I doubt that.
>
Doubt away!
>> Does ‘reject’ mean I don’t personally take part in or
>> agree with some idea or action?
>
> No: you've made a decision for yourself about eating meat, and then you've presented your decision as 'an ethical imperative' and thus denounce everyone else whose ethics aren't up to your standards.
I see it as it as an argument in defence of an ethical choice — which I was saying applied not just to me but for those who choose to eat meat based on how the meat was produced (which by the way is different from my non-decision not to start eating meat)… sort of the thing that Doug mentioned (albeit in passing) about shunning mass produced (IIRC) meat. He doesn’t get into the reasons, and perhaps they are not ethical (it is also possible I am using the word ‘ethics’ incorrectly!), or perhaps if he were to state these reasons then he would be in the wrong. That seems to be an issue of politeness.
>
>> I think it is fine that others do eat meat ...
>
> Not if you craft your own choice not to as ethical you don’t.
But I did not present my “choice” (which as I noted is really a non-choice) as ethical.
> This is something like "I'm good at chess; great chess players are smart; if you can't beat me at chess, I'm smarter than you" …
Fortunately, I am terrible at chess. It doesn’t matter though who’s better at playing chess. The thing is to play the game.
> You're more ethical than me because you don't eat meat?
And better looking too, because I don’t eat meat!
>
>>> And of course your own choice is not one of politics
>>> either; it's simply a matter of ethics.
>>
>> Why “simply”?
>
> I'm not giving you my viewpoint; I'm giving you *your* viewpoint. You said:
>
>>> The issue, for those so inclined (or convinced), is not
>>> simply one of sending a message to corporations, but is
>>> an ethical imperative.
>
> So are you asking why you said "simply” …?
>
But if you see the quoted part above, I am not calling ethics “simple”; it is the “sending a message to corporations” that I say is “simple”. Surely my writing is not so mangled that that’s unclear?
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On May 9, 2011, at 6:39 PM, Doug Henwood wrote:
> But a politics without representation, exclusion, dogmatism, and utopianism is no politics at all (which is why Schmitt quite rightly sees liberalism as lacking a politics). It is instead an ethics. Is it any surprise, then, that under neoliberalism ostensible leftists spend countless hours and pages and keystrokes elaborating ethics? the ethics of this or the ethics of that, fundamentally personal and individual approaches that obscure and deny the systems and structures in which they are embedded?
Isn’t this a bit of question begging relative to my post? My question was whether there is no intersection between ethics and politics… should I read the above to mean that the author you quote (Jodi Dean, I think) and you believe the answer is ‘no’?
Also this seems to assume that ethics are personal and individual, and not capable of systematised study or universalisation (that task needs to be done, not merely “presented” as Jordan Hayes accuses me of doing). Can ethics not be the very tool to understand and break free of the systems and structures in which we are embedded? In the quoted text is listed the “crime of representation” = “taking the place or speaking for another”. This idea, of representation, of speaking for another, seems counter to the notion of self-interest (enlightened or otherwise) and is the vehicle of what we traditionally call morality or moral reasoning. Such reasoning places at centre the primacy of agency, rather than a reliance solely on historical forces leading to an inexorable [favourable] outcome. No?
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On May 9, 2011, at 6:59 PM, Somebody Somebody wrote:
>
>> Ravi: Why “simply”? And isn’t “politics” a larger beast than consumer politics/activism? Do you think that there is no intersection between politics and ethics?
>
> Somebody: Sadly, many seem to think so. We know what a left without explicit ethics looks like. The problem is this: even in the absence of a stated ethic, any political project is latent with an implicit ethical framework. And by not elucidating precisely what that ethic comprises, you leave it subject to unrecognized inconsistencies, biases, and prejudices carried over from the past.
That seems reasonable to me.
—ravi