Stigma on steroids

[imomus]

In yesterday's entry I argued that the current Republican party sees itself -- and is trying to encourage America to see itself -- as The Other in a grotesque development from identity politics, which I described as 'narcissistic'. Someone posted the following comment:

You certainly love to use heteronormative references and structure in your arguments. You label blacks, gays and women as narcissistic when they are struggling for issues that are deeply personal to them. Why don't you shed your white male privilege for long enough to imagine yourself being the target of a national campaign to label you as "other" and to codify this status into law, and then imagine that this issue is validated, not only by the ones who really hate you, but also by the ones struggling to find a narrative that doesn't require any sacrifices of them. Then imagine what kind of mischief you can create when you refuse to conform to the heteronormative script so well developed by our media and start writing your own script with no clear ending...

Of course I abhor injustice and prejudice, and I'm sympathetic to the motives behind identity politics. I like the idea that we can re-write our social scripts and renegotiate our social roles. But there are big problems with identity politics.

Identity politics has been linked with deconstruction, because both are concerned with renegotiation of the 'repressed' terms of semantic binaries. In feminism, for instance, the 'repressed term' in the male/female binary is detached from its social semantics and renegotiated.



Now, society is syntagmatic, not paradigmatic -- that is, it works like a sentence rather than a list of nouns, or like a family rather than a barracks. Social power is the result of social elements working with elements unlike themselves. The basis of social power is the promise to work on behalf of others. Those who have social power are those who manage to convince many types of people with different interests that they will represent everybody's interests, not just their own. In other words, social power tends to go to those who at least pose as The Universal rather than The Other. Identity politics, though, is based on single-issues, and on self-identity as The Other. Historically it's a product of 'The Me Generation' of the 1970s. It consists in a narcissistic withdrawal from the social syntagm, the 'sentence' of society, and an alignment with the 'paradigm' of other similar elements. 'People don't like me, so I want to be with people like me.'

The obvious limitation of this strategy is that, although it can allow for a renegotiation of one's social value -- the third phase in deconstruction is re-insertion of the renegotiated binary back into the social sentence, just as the third phase in feminism is a fully-integrated superwoman -- the narcissism involved actually diminishes the social power of the actor. When I become The Other and act on my own behalf, according to the narrow interests of my category, it's hard to claim to act on behalf of a broader 'we' again. The best I can hope for is that my narcissism will be indulged with celebratory (and patronising) acknowledgements, symbolic reparations, token awards, policed language.

The fact is, one cannot renegotiate a social role based only on 'What we'll do for people like ourselves'. One can only renegotiate it based on 'What we'll do for everyone'. To some extent identity politics has succeeded in this 're-inscription'. But the problem for groups who self-identify as The Other is the same as the problem the US faces in Iraq: legitimacy. You need to persuade people whose interests are not your own that you have their interests at heart too, and to do that you have to pose as The Universal, not The Other.



There is nothing outside of society. Those who try to break off from it altogether wallow in disillusionment and neglect. Narcissism is an attempt to substitute with pumped-up self-love the love which can only come from others. Narcissism can also become a vicious circle. Trying to escape the stigma of our social roles, we become a parody of them, 'stigma on steroids'. It's fine to 'go on strike' to renegotiate one's social value, but one shouldn't turn a strike into unemployment. One must go back to work eventually within the social syntagm, not stay in one's paradigm with isolated social elements like oneself. Isolation and narcissism are the way to become disempowered, not empowered.

There are two further problems with identity politics. The first is that as social groups withdraw one by one from the mainstream to renegotiate their value based on single identity-related issues, everyone is encouraged to see themselves as a minority, even the powerful. The effect is a narcissized and fragmented society of single-interest groups. And at that point, it seems clear that the richest and most powerful single interest group will win. It's a truly terrible scenario when the conservative white male sees himself as an embattled minority, a victim, and starts basing his actions only on his own narcissistic interests. This is what has happened with the US right. The powerful have taken on the mantle of the ultimate victims, and their power seems to them to be 'empowerment'. They act for no-one but themselves, and if they speak for anyone else, it's a half-hearted lie. This appalling situation is a perversion of identity politics (call it 'steroids on stigma' rather than 'stigma on steroids'), but it's a logical progression from it; the final stage, the death rattle.



There's another problem with identity politics. Let's call it 'the azza problem'. It's not just society itself that's fragmented, we also have increasingly fragmented personal identities. Do I react to something as a white man, as a person with a visual handicap, as a Marxist, as an exile, as a musician, as a non-motorist, as a person in a cross-racial relationship, as a poor person with no savings, as a Japan-lover? I have many possible hats, and many possible -- and possibly conflicting -- interests. How many clubs and organisations do I have to join? How many political parties campaigning on single issues can I vote for? What does 'identity' mean if I can switch roles and alliances so quickly? The closer I get to a single-issue, identity-based group, the more I feel I'm neglecting all the other identities within myself.

Comments

[ohnefuehlen.livejournal.com]

Wondered if you'd seen this table (http://www.alexgrantz.com/~agrantz/pics/2004election_by_iq.jpg), and what you thought.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I did indeed see that table. I thought:

1. Bush voters are stupid.
2. Bush voters are poor.
3. Bush's policies benefit the rich above all.
4. Bush bamboozles his electoral base.
5. Marx was right: it's not enough to be a class-in-itself, you must become a class-for-itself.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Of course, you might then say 'What's the difference between becoming a class-for-itself and becoming a gender-for-itself or a race-for-itself?' And that's a hard question to answer. I can only offer tentative answers:

* It's my personal culture to think in Marxist terms about hegemony, and to see class struggle as the motor of history and the broad church within which all other power struggles can be accommodated.
* I see identity politics as having, to some extent, undermined Marxist class struggle by fragmenting and domesticating the critique of power and replacing Marxism's coalition of interests (intellectuals, workers, trade unionists, social democratic liberals, anti-imperialists, etc) and theoretical rigour with small-scale skirmishes based in narcissism.
* If the aim of Marxism is the economic and structural transformation of an entire society, the aim of Identity politics all too often seems to be nothing more than symbolic acknowledgement, reparations and apologies.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I said yesterday that Identity Politics is 'an Oedipal struggle to get free of The Father'. The term of course comes from Freud, whose definition of mental health was the ability to love and to work. So we have to ask, does the Oedipal struggle help us to love and to work? Or is it just an expression of useless rage, a quest for 'moronic authenticity'?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Another thought just occurred, and I think this is an important one, relating to the thing the other day about Guilt and Shame cultures. Identity politics is an attempt to re-aportion guilt. One refuses to feel guilty any more about being gay, for instance, instead proclaiming that the authorities and the mainstream of society have victimised gay people and should, themselves, feel guilty for doing so. But this only works if the authorities or majority opinion is vaguely liberal, as it was in the 70s -- if, on other words, it's still claiming to have things like human rights at heart, and to be representing everyone in that Universalist Enlightenment spirit. But with the current administration, we can no longer take that for granted. Torture, extra-judicial arrest and detainment, pre-emptive war... it all suggests that rights take a back seat to interests, and that interests are very narrowly defined. I could have said 'vested interests', and noted that the word 'vested' means something close to the word 'situated'. Strange as it is to say, the current US administration is run by a minority group who have put their single-issue interests ahead of all others, and are militant about it. They refuse to feel guilty, they harp on their victimhood (9/11), and they demand empowerment. It's a ghastly parody of identity politics, a parody which means that the actual appeals of actual minority groups will fall on deaf ears. It is both the culmination and the end of identity politics.

Why are you always throwing around the term "narcissim" with identity politics?

[(Anonymous)]

Or do you protest to much? Sure, I may be caught in a naive spiral of identity political thinking, but it is only because as a queer in the American South, much of my culture wants to deny my existence as a phenomenon altogether, and then only addressing me in terms of other when they have to. Right now, we are engaged in a struggle just to inform others that WE EXIST AT ALL AMONG YOU. I mean, I have had to deal with John Rockers all of my life, and also those have asked me to deny myself through coercion and force. I am not kidding. I was taken out of class in elementary school and given special indoctrination in how to act like the other kids

"Do-so the dolphin says the boys like to play rough and girls like to play nice. You're a boy, do so as the other boys"

It would be lovely if there could be a revival of New-Deal like socialism here in the south that helped pull us out of the Depression, and I have always advocated such. Unfortunately, these damn Republican yankees keep moving to the suburbs around Atlanta and have made a pact with the local Klan and Baptist ministers. I'm trying to make a living, here and it just keeps getting harder.

I walked into the inverview wearing my normal skirtsuit and described by experience working for the poor in Macon with Legal Services. I did not refer to my gender status by name, but when I get caught up in talking shop, my voice drops, and I may even adopt some of the mannerisms that would make a woman "assertive" and a man "agressive". I left thinking the interview went really well. A couple of weeks later, I got a letter from the firm: "Dear Mr. Roberts" it began. I ripped it to shreds.

For American marxist thought, read Herbert Marcuse. He knew thirty years ago that americans will exchange their rights in return for enough money to afford the bass-boat.

I see my identity politics less as a desire to move the mainstream toward me but simply as a way to survive in an increasingly hostile environment. Things are so complicated now, and I can never truly count on my identity being anonymous. No matter how well I look or pass someone somewhere will be able to clock me. And no matter how well I get my legal identity in order, something from my past will always be there to mock me.

[hahawhat.livejournal.com]

I want to point out that identity politics aren't always fighting for the rights of the Other, and many times they are fighting for the Universal. I would say, for instance, that queer theory, or at least the branches I personally am most interested in, is not really at all about "equal rights," but instead the destruction of stifling gender roles that we are all, universally are oppressed and smothered by, many times consciously. The mainstream may not recognize this as the case, but it is certainly true - we all suffer when men cannot weep and women are constantly warbling.

Your talk of the Other also brought this up in my mind... Feminism and queer theory are completely entangled to me. The issues they are tackling are products of a flawed archetype, born of a framework that does not reflect reality but rather power. In my utopia, we are all "free to be you and me," but I am painfully reminded of Durkheim's theories on a Society of Saints, and anomie. A lack of social norms and boundaries is an impossibility, and what I am asking for when I call for people to unlearn what they "know" about gender is for them to float in an endless sea of possibilities, where nobody is wrong. I am essentially fighting to eliminate the Other, and this directly contradicts what I believe about society.

I suppose the shortest rebuttal to this is that it is not the end result but the struggle that is worth it, so we at least get as far towards our goal that we don't constitutionalize discrimination, as we did here in America in 11 states in the past month. This still doesn't satisfy me, or assure me of my purpose. Maybe all I am am, indeed, looking for is an apology.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

There's a lot in there, and a lot I accept. But I want to focus on this:

Your talk of the Other also brought this up in my mind... Feminism and queer theory are completely entangled to me.

Do you accept that the current Republicanism is also tied to feminist and queer theory? I know it sounds odd at first, but reading accounts of how Bush and Rove bonded when they first met, it struck me that it was a hatred of the permissive 60s that they shared. And I think the whole 'Iron John' thing in the 90s is a direct appropriation by men of the women's movement. Men were keen to stop embodying some kind of universal justice and rationality and get in touch with their 'primal man' (and their fathers) the same way women were getting in touch with the sisterhood (and their mothers). The idea of solidarity around the shared values of a microculture with common interests cuts both ways -- conservatives can play that game too. And their 'consciousness raising' sessions produce things like 'The Project For The New American Century'.

[andypop.livejournal.com]

the whole 'Iron John' thing in the 90s is a direct appropriation by men of the women's movement

Yes it was...

Men were keen to stop embodying some kind of universal justice and rationality and get in touch with their 'primal man' (and their fathers) the same way women were getting in touch with the sisterhood (and their mothers)

... but that era has passed. Iron John was an attempt to dig up some kind of elemental, 'essential' masculine identity, but many within gender theory/queer theory/feminism since the 80s have been working hard to torpedo the very idea that there is any essential, natural identity for anyone at all. Just as you pointed out recently regarding the supposed authenticity of the recording techniques used on the Devendra Banhart album, the Iron John persona is entirely a modern construct, as are all 'identities'. Your comment about the "third stage" of feminism hardly applies to most feminists (and feminisms) today. Much current feminism could be accurately described as an anti-identity politics.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Oh, of course. I file the 'Iron John' thing under 'moronic authenticity' and 'fake folk'. It's a construct. The important thing about it is the renunciation of responsibility, the end of the claim to be 'Universal', the lack of interest in the representation of other people's interests rather than just one's own. This is the limitation of postmodern identity politics of all kinds. It's all me, me, me. One becomes The Other in order not to have to think about others.

[andypop.livejournal.com]

Yes, point taken.

'moronic authenticity' and 'fake folk'

I quite like these as names for genres. "And here's the latest fake folk record on the Moronic Authenticity label..."

[kementari2.livejournal.com]

"the aim of Identity politics all too often seems to be nothing more than symbolic acknowledgement, reparations and apologies"

This sounds like the "shame culture" you described in your last post, although I doubt you meant it to. What would you say about the relationship between guilt/shame cultures and marxist/identity interest societies?

[uberdionysus.livejournal.com]

I don't have much to add because I largely agree with you (and have silently agreed with your last few entries).

I've been railing against the insularity of identity politics even though I agree with the destruction of the binaries and ideals that create the Other.

All I have to say is that I'm glad you're a Marxist because it makes me nervous when I consistently and complete agree with anyone.

(BTW, I like a lot of Marxist thought, but I see stuff like "the class struggle as the motor of history" as worthless metaphysics. I don't think anything is a "motor of history," but there have been a lot of class struggles.)

Anyway, I'm glad you're around to elucidate my thoughts.

iq chart

[(Anonymous)]

I just wanted to point out that the IQ chart linked above is pretty widely regarded to be an internet hoax. If the average iq between the 'smartest' and 'dumbest' states really was that wide, I think some of those states would have a hard time running their affairs. Here's another attempt at the chart using IQ averages derived from SAT and ACT scores.

CHART (http://sq.4mg.com/IQpolitics.htm)

blague glas blah

[piratehead.livejournal.com]

Now, society is syntagmatic, not paradigmatic -- that is, it works like a sentence rather than a list of nouns, or like a family rather than a barracks. Social power is the result of social elements working with elements unlike themselves.

This is an incisive statement, but the expression 'working with' conceals a whole range of different relationships. Linguists use verbs like 'govern', 'dominate' and 'subordinate' to describe this 'working' relationship. Syntactic elements are also described as sisters and mothers to one another, charmingly. I used to say that, as a political theorist, Chomsky made a fine linguist. Perhaps that was more just than I thought-- perhaps he's deovted his whole energy to syntactic analysis.

In the phrase , "for" governs two elements, fig and Momus. "For" is the mother term. FIG and MOMUS are sister terms. Likewise, in "eye of the beholder", "of" governs both "eye" and "beholder".(Of man's first disobedience and the fruit of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste brought death into the world with all our)

Whoa. This is turning into a bit of half-remembered mish-mash, so on to the next point. 'Paradigmatic' is another concept borrowed from grammar, and paradigms, as your post intimates, are always abstracted from the flux of syntactic constructions. Paradigms are taxonomies, syntagma are ecosystems. Paradigms comprise the Grammars written to prevent change.

Are we our language? Is grammar theology, just like old Marty H whispered in his schwarzwalderbierstein? Are grammars theologies?

If it's all expressible in the terms by which we think we understand language, where and how do we re-insert the renegotiated binary? How do we renegotiate the binary? It's all a bit you-topian, me-topian for all us cracked Narcissi.





Fuck that. I say 2, too. The good is diffusive of its self. In any natural language, the number of possible sentences is infinte, allowing for sentences of infinite length. It's a first order, arithmetical kind of infinity, but that's about as much as our untrained senses can handle anyway.

[33mhz.livejournal.com]

The classic marxist argument is that the ruling class seeks to pit various oppressed classes against one another: divide, conquer and preserve one's power.

That was never too convincing until I saw a note from a woman who had consciously voted against her own interest in order to make sure that gay marriage remained illegal in the US within her lifetime.

The good news is that I've come to see the accuracy of this marxist critique. The bad news is that so has everyone else, and they are perfectly okay with its implications. Oops!

[bugpowered.livejournal.com]

Le premier fait historique n'est pas, comme l'écrit scandaleusement Marx en 1846, la production de moyens permettant de satisfaire les besoins de manger, boire, habiter, se vêtir - quel est l'animal qui ne les satisfait pas sinon l'animal mort - mais l'utilisation de ces besoins animaux et des moyens de les satisfaire à des fins de communication. Ce qui distingue l'homme de l'animal est justement que manger, boire, se vêtir, habiter n'ont plus eux-mêmes comme fin, mais la communication, ne sont que des prétextes à la communication. Le premier fait historique n'est pas la production de la vie prétendument matérielle mais de la communication.

La présupposition première de toute existence humaine n'est pas, comme l'écrit scandaleusement Marx, que les hommes doivent être à même de vivre pour pouvoir faire l'histoire, et que pour cela il faut avant tout - le « avant tout » est bien de Marx - boire, manger, se loger, s'habiller et quelques autres choses encore. Cela tous les animaux le font et ne sont pas pour autant des hommes, ils ne font pas pour autant leur histoire. C'est simplement la présupposition de la vie de n'importe quel animal : il faut qu'un animal mange, boive, dorme s'il veut vivre, il faut qu'un animal vive s'il veut vivre. Voilà le genre de tautologie qui a cours pompeusement depuis 100 ans chez les savants social-démocrates qui veulent éduquer le peuple, cet ignorant. Au contraire, la présupposition première de toute existence humaine, partant de toute histoire, est que certains animaux utilisent leur vie d'animal, utilisent ce qui était un but et en fassent donc un simple moyen - en un mot suppriment l'indépendance de ce but - pour communiquer. Evidemment, seuls des animaux vivants peuvent s'aviser de faire cela, mais ce n'est pas le fait qu'ils soient vivants, qu'ils mangent, qu'ils boivent, qui permet de dire qu'ils sont des hommes, mais seulement qu'ils utilisent cela pour communiquer. Les hommes pour être à même de vivre, et de vivre comme des hommes et non seulement comme des animaux, doivent être justement capables - c'est cette capacité qui est refusée aux esclaves salariés ou non, aux assujettis, aux pauvres de tous les temps - d'utiliser leurs besoins animaux, la satisfaction de leurs besoins de manger, de boire, de se loger, de s'habiller à des fins de communication, comme matière à communication.

Pour que les hommes soient à même de vivre comme des hommes, il faut avant tout qu'ils communiquent et ce faisant seulement, ils font l'histoire : l'histoire est l'histoire de la communication.

En toutes sociétés, la première tâche des hommes n'est pas de produire leurs moyens d'existence, les relations qui s'établissent entre eux ne s'établissant pas pour assurer cette production, sinon en apparence dans la pensée dominante. Et ces relations ne constituent pas la structure économique [ economy ] de la société, la base concrète sur laquelle s'élève une superstructure juridique et politique et à laquelle correspondraient des formes de conscience sociale déterminées, sinon en apparence dans la pensée dominante. En toute société, la première tâche des hommes est de communiquer et les relations qui s'établissent entre eux ont pour but les relations qui s'établissent entre eux. Contrairement à ce que dit scandaleusement Marx en 1859, les hommes n'ont pas pour but de produire socialement leur existence. Les hommes ont pour but de produire leur existence sociale. Cette existence sociale est la seule production réelle des hommes, la communication est la seule chose réelle réellement produite par les hommes et la production de cette communication - production qui est la communication elle-même - est la seule production réelle dans le monde, la production du monde lui-même. La structure de la société est la structure de la communication. La base concrète sur laquelle s'élève tout ce qui existe dans la société est la communication. Et l'on ose soutenir que c'est dans la pensée de Hegel que le monde est à l'envers !

( http://perso.wanadoo.fr/leuven/rapport.htm )

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Je ne peux pas prendre ces paroles au serieux, ils font partie, sans doute, d'une parodie et reflettent ni ce que je dis ici, ni mon attitude generale a envers la production et la communication. Je n'accepte pas le modele classique d'un superstructure culturelle determine par la basse economique, ni son inverse. Il y a un relation toujours complexe entre les deux. Et la distinction entre animaux et etres humains m'interesse peu. Mais c'est amusant de causer ici en francais, en tout cas -- pour ca, merci!

[33mhz.livejournal.com]

I get the impression that I would enjoy this response much more if I spoke French.

Hold on there, cowboy!

[(Anonymous)]

Do I react to something as a white man, as a person with a visual handicap, as a Marxist, as an exile, as a musician, as a non-motorist, as a person in a cross-racial relationship, as a poor person with no savings, as a Japan-lover?

- If you're really a Marxist, then you react primarily as a worker bee. Some identities necessarily trump others, no? I read you as reacting in the following distinct order:

Marxist
Poor Person with no Savings
Artist/Musician
Exile
Japan-lover
A person in a cross-racial relationship
A person with a visual handicap
A white man
A non-motorist

In other news, you've won an award with no name! http://berlin.typepad.com

Identity politics

[(Anonymous)]

How about this thought: I as a queer person in the American South do not seek to belong to the Other, but have been forced into this position by a culture that insists on a perpetual war against elements subversive to judeo-christian identity. A universalist approach can be: the queer experience can help free people from roles restricted by gender and sexual norms, to the benefit of society, as production is not lost to worrying whether one is going to be bashed on the way to work.

Re: Identity politics

[imomus.livejournal.com]

There were some attempts to link up the various minorities in a wider political movement, but they failed, and not only did blacks and gays, for instance, not make common cause, but both lost touch with the American working class. That wouldn't have happened if a movement based on a more classic Marxist conception of class struggle had developed in the US instead of a piecemeal identity politics. If the US left had managed to develop a trade union movement alongside things like gay liberation, the neocons wouldn't have been able to form their completely ridiculous alliance between super-rich and super-poor, people whose interests don't overlap in any way. But the idea of socialism succeeding in the US during the Cold War, and in the face of Christianity and individualism, is almost inconceivable. So I appreciate that you're trapped in the role of the Other, and it's worse than ever because The Universal has been abandoned, along with ideas like human rights. The only good news, I think, is that Karl Rove's use of gay marriage to whip up fear has put gay marriage on the agenda as an idea. So perhaps in a few years it might become a possibility. It costs less than, say, reparations for slavery.

Re: Identity politics

[(Anonymous)]

You must also remember that trade unions excluded minorities up through the 1950's. The trade unions have only themselves to blame for failing to acquire mass appeal. They did not sympathize with other struggles and constantly sought to invalidate their concerns in the cold-war effort to show some kind of unity on their terms and to profit handsomely off the successive war efforts.
I would love to join a rainbow coalition of some other "Universalist" cause where I am included. Where can I find one of those. Does the class struggle admit queers, now? finally?

[gucky.livejournal.com]

As much as I love the Internet, sometimes I long for the days that I couldn't find a bevy of like-minded people that share vaguely the same interests and values as I do.

By surrounding myself with people *just like me*, I start to believe that my way is The Way. I find myself awestruck that not everyone is just like my tribe the day after the primary, after the election.

There's less incentive to find commonality with those unlike us when we have an outlet in which we can find our "perfect" friends. We're insulated from the reality of our scarcity.

If I only want to deal with female, right-handed, liberal comic book lovers that collect frogs and have stereoblindness, I get on a user group, a social networking tool, on google, and they're only an instant message, email or blog away.

And when I have major decisions to make, financially, politically, I can convince myself I have everyone's best interests in mind, because I've convinced myself that everyone, or at least a significant part of the population, is just like me. So I can mask self-interest in the belief of universal good and keep on believing that I'm the good guy in all this madness.

[kementari2.livejournal.com]

I have actually found that much of my internet time is spent reading opinions and viewpoints very different than mine, which I wouldn't ordinarily get by hanging out with my friends or sitting in classes. For example, if a topic like overfishing in the Chesapeake Bay catches my interest, I'm instantly researching several points of view on it. If I just asked one person I know what they thought, I'd get a much shallower argument.

Sometimes I do think that I temporarily surround myself with different people or viewpoints merely to better define my own identity or viewpoint. But once that process has started, I don't simply surround myself with people who have a similar identity or viewpoint to what I'm discovering about myself - I always, even if my mind is made up, try to be around different sorts of people.

There is, however, the need for a kind of critical mass of people that share parts of my interests or viewpoint. I wouldn't be happy amongst only much different people. So the extent to which I seek out people like me is often affected by whether I feel that critical mass has been reached.

One last jab at identity politcs

[(Anonymous)]

Okay, Okay! I suspect "identity politics" is the subject du jour because all of those queers who wanted to get married and have the 1020 or so rights and priveleges that straights have for themselves fucked it up for everyone else this election. So, I guess I should just shut up and go to the back of the bus and just be glad I'm not another hate crime statistic and that I'm tolerated despite my obvious deficiencies. After all, it will be the hetero marxists/postmodernists who will lead us to salvation. I'll just be sitting here thinking of ways to be rhizomatic.

[shortskirt.livejournal.com]

fuck college. this journal does the job.

[(Anonymous)]

haha,

yeah i pretty much look at it as a free class everyday as well.

-shane

part 1

[turkishb.livejournal.com]

My brother is going to turn 8 this weekend. He takes the bus to elementary school. When I first took the bus I was so shy that it brought me all the way back to the bus depot because I wouldn't even speak to be let off. In contrast, my brother could not possibly be more autonomous without being a psychopath.

My brother and I are very close and so every day he tells me about "the bus." Every day is a new story about being told he did something gay, or --with somewhat less frequency-- that he's a retard.

My brother is much more heteronormative than I ever was. He's built like a little man, and has predominantly masculine interests. However his respect for me and his mother has been such that he has a sort of reverence for girly things. He loves nail polish, wants longer hair, and occasionally borrows my scarves which are --god forbid-- rather girly.

So every day I am faced with the question, do I support his autonomy and preserve the parts of his identity that are being crushed by "the bus" or should I silently consent to the societal pressures that will help him fulfill the role of manliness?

However, as you well point out, that I can even be asking that question of myself is something of a miracle. My family is by no measure wealthy, but we are comfortable. My concerns are never will my brother eat tonight -- I always know he will. What I worry, however, is if one of his explorations outside of his normative role is crushed then how will he empathize with others subverted by the Normal at all?

As in if he believes he is in the Normal (I hope my distinction from the Universal is acceptable) why should he care about the Other except to antagonize it? If he is on the top --and white psychopathic men are-- how does he sympathize with the bottom? Why should he sympathize with the bottom?

I think of queerness (I mean that in the broadest sense) as a tool to reduce people to more authentic grounds -- more humanist grounds.

When I first started to come to grips with my own queerness my first impulse was to subvert it and reconcile it with the Normal. Gay didn't antagonize identities --especially not gender roles-- but further supported it. As I matured I found myself less and less interested in reconciling with the Normal because I saw it not as the Normal but the Authority.

The Normal is a fantasy, and the Authority uses that fantasy to control us. It became clear to me that society was not about moral absolutes or truths --the Universal--, but rather about peoples' vested interests. We are complacent to government because we wish to consent to a stable civilization not because we agree with our government. We say okay to less individual power so we can experience relationships with others. Existentially, most people appreciate the diffusion of responsibility...

part 2

[turkishb.livejournal.com]

In the Normal we have a place, and our place is our creed. If you break from your place in any way you must reconcile your being exiled by the Authority. I wonder how well I would've questioned the Authority had I not recognized that I was not in the Normal -- had I not been exiled.

So when my brother says, "people say the scarf isn't cool" I reply, "you're a person and if you say it's cool, then people say it's cool, don't they?"

I think we forget that in reinforcing identity we can reinforce humanity, but we can't necessarily reinforce governmental authority. I try to impress on my brother that the greatest common denominator of society is really the sublimity of life. I think a socialist government could definitely do better to support that.

But how people realize socialism (and I know it's unfair to substitute that for Marxism, really) will always be a personal matter. Socialism is about the struggle against falsely normative culture --one that insulates the upper class as the most normal Normalites-- and sometimes so is identity politics.

I don't think socialism should disown identity politics, but rather that identity politics should realize the inequalities against them are symptomatic of a larger monster. They are a dot in the matrix of human rights being crushed by the global oligarchy we suffer under. Push back from your dot, but don't let go of the others, and when you see them losing their grip--lend a fucking hand.

That was an awful lot to write considering I agreed with you.

<3

[(Anonymous)]

Isn't your call to like-minded Americans to exile themselves from America a sort of identity politics move? Isn't it exactly 'people don't like me, so I want to be with people like me'? Liberal-thinking arty graphic designer and independent musician type people should get out of the country that nurtured them but doesn't like them any more. In a way, 'artistic' (as opposed to economic) migration is very much cutting yourself off from one society without really joining any other society (in that one is mainly mixing with other like-minded expats, not bothering with the local mores and language etc.) What say you?

[(Anonymous)]

I may not be the one who made that particular call to like-minded Americans, but being an American "Liberal-thinking arty graphic designer" who seems to have answered it before it was made, I'd say that to me, if identity politics is regarding just a segment of the population, the decision to leave is taking that segment, and further slicing it down to a completely individual level.

I never left out of any intention of asserting myself into some culture of like-minded expats, nor did I have any idea that said culture existed. Only after a year am I to some degree aware of it, and even then, only on the physical-space-flattening internet through blogs like this. As of yet, there is no tangible social contact with its denizens.

I spend my time here (Tokyo) mostly alone. When I wander the city, I am only in actual contact with other humans at the moment I purchase my design / music related items or food. The thing is, I don't find this behavior or lifestyle drastically different from what I was doing in the land that nurtured me, only that the surroundings are 1000% more interesting and nuanced. And at least here I don't have to own a car and sit in traffic (fucking LA) to do it.

That said, yes, it is very much cutting away from one society without really joining another, well perhaps floating over another. But that floating to me is part of a new society which has no regard for nationality. And if I had to mention specifically a less lucid society which I am a part of, then I again cite some kind of nationless "design society," as I work, and spend almost all my time in, an international ad agency centered here. 90% of it is Japanese, and 100% is English-speaking. Now, advertising is deeply tied to culture (and nationality, perhaps), but in order to create successful advertising, I'd say this culture and nationality must be transcended to a certain extent. In other words, "not bothering with the local mores and language" as you put it, while at the same time understanding them completely.

Understanding a language completely without actually being fluent in it. It sounds like a pretty heavy (but worthy) aspiration, and there may yet be a few people here showing some promise at it. That may be the challenge (in addition to learning the language proper) for anyone else who does decide to desert America, but I feel we should take advantage of the current structure of the world and start moving around. Even if we join no other society, at least we join the "moving around" society, and better any place we settle with an enlarged perspective. It's an experience that wasn't afforded by a whole lot of previous generations. And your money won't go to fuckface while doing it.

I'm not sure what this has to do with identity politics anymore tho... ha

-shane

[neckbonejones.livejournal.com]

We've broken with America and started our own "virtual nation"! It's called freemeania, which is what we thought a redneck militia might call itself.

We're wondering you can one day become an official citizen of a virtual "state"! Illusory, and at Liberty!