> Although, from my dealings with them - Amanda, Jessica Valenti, etc. - they
> don't have a clue what deconstruction is. In fact, they generally attacked
> anything related to theory -- where theory is *explanation* about why women
> are oppressed and how women's oppression relates to other forms of
> oppression. As an example, they consistently chalked up differences among
> feminists to personality differences (personal foibles, desire for personal
> aggrandizement or fame, jealousy) rather than trying to understand it as
> differences in their understandings of how the world works, what the enemy
> is, and how to fight it.
>
> And while they disavow theory, they do have one: Liberal feminism. Perhaps
> the best example of which is described at this site:
> http://everydayfeminism.com/about-ef/our-vision/
>
> I'd say this has very little to do with deconstruction. Deconstruction is a
> method of looking at a text to reveal how that text is produced by a set of
> binary oppositions - contradictions, paradoxes. The idea is to show how the
> text fails by it's _own_ criteria.
>
Ok, this is closer to what I'm trying to grapple with. My point is not that the behavior I'm talking about is deliberately based in Theory, more that it had certain roots in either the application or misconstrual of deconstruction. Call it a debased, misattributed, vulgarized version, what have you, that's ok. Like noting how Deepak Chopra uses quantum physics, and the idea is not to blame quantum for Chopra. But you have to wonder how new agers took it and ran with it.
Richard mentioned resemblances to psychoanalysis, which had occurred to me as well.
There are certain worn ruts that look familiar. Some involve ritual self-criticism and denouncement, tendencies that I don't recall from 25 years ago, and others which I described that do. I'm not certain whether I'm imagining things now, but treating that early 90's business like it were the Apparition of Fatima makes it all the more interesting. Fred deBoer describes a world that sounds like my undergrad experience, only more so, that I thought had been a phase. The Antioch Rules arose in the early 90's to become an obscure joke... until last year. Why is that?
The stuff you see on the internet really isn't new. It's always been there.
> It's not more vicious or hurtful. Who cared in 2004 when a handful of
> feminist bloggers were trying to get others fired? Who cared when an attack
> on one blogger -- for her post about deconstructionism and feminism -- was
> so vicious - such a personal attack -- that she had a nervous breakdown?
>
>
That does make me wonder about the timing. What had occurred to me was how
Trashing: The Dark Side of Sisterhood came 20ish years before the early
90's. Not that that means those tendencies haven't always been in the
background, but I wonder about the cycling.
The crazy blog wars of 10 years ago were the result of people sitting
> around in the secrecy of a private, invite-only email list and actually
> conspiring as to how to attack, at first, male bloggers and, later, how to
> attack other bloggers who criticized their work. It's a phenom that's just
> exacerbated by the tools of social media - amplified and faster where
> social media uses mechanisms of social control - the psychology of
> persuasion -- to get people to feel frenzied, addicted, depressed and
> lonely in the absence of tweets and status updates, waiting on the edge for
> the next notification.
>
I agree that social media contributes to the frenzied quality of the current situation.
[...]
I had to laugh: a couple of weeks ago I stumbled over a forum where a
> handful of women of color bloggers were complaining about Tim Wise as a
> hustler, a man who hustles anti-racist sentiment to make his reputation
> scolding white people for their racism to an audience of other white people
> who "get off on" the action: watching someone else be disciplined for their
> racism.
>
I have this vision of Donald Duck frantically trying to convince Elmer Fudd that it's rabbit season.
-- Andy "It's a testament to ketchup that there can be no confusion."