> Second, as Shag points out and as any decent sociologist knows, Durkheim's
> key point is that deviance primarily serves to reinforce the normal. The
> people, then, who are responsible fore reigning in deviance or prosecuting
> deviants are those engaged most immediately in what sociologists of science
> call boundary projects maintaining the difference between normalcy and
> deviance, the difference necessary for the reproduction of society.
I wasn't planning to get back into it, but this is why dismissing people like Ashley Love or the unwilling "Ma'am" at the Jacobin panel as "crazy" deserves - and I'd say needs - to be called out. It always surprises and saddens me when otherwise smart and seemingly evolved people don't get this.
I'm not sure I'll ever fully understand the sensitivity over "gulag" references. (And please resist any temptation to "educate" me about it; it's not that I lack information.) I don't feel any personal responsibility for that, and don't understand why anyone else would, unless they feel genuinely complicit in some way AND have never come to terms with that (admitted the error, grieved the loss of self-esteem involved, re-calibrated one's theory or values, or whatever). But I do know that such sensitivities are in play, and if only for that reason I possibly should have avoided the term.
Having said that, I do think it's important to admit to ourselves what we already know about group formation, loyalty and "normality," and remain alert to our own tendencies to dismiss and exclude those we find annoying. After all, no true revolutionary would ever do that, right?
I think Carrol is probably right that Jodi's politics would become vicious if made concrete. She also seems to have learned well that kind of listening you're forced to do in grad school in order to make a mark: the one where you listen not for understanding but for things you can see a way to disagree with - a habit incentivised by the pressure to extrude academic product, whether from your mouth or your fingertips. Eubulides called the result "self-serving projective misreadings of other's struggles to articulate difficult issues" several weeks ago, which I thought was great.
I feel like I'm painting with a big, clumsy brush but hopefully some sense will have made its way onto the canvas.