Chapter 4 of Real Identities deals with the notion of truth, among other topics.
She writes, "The portrayal of how philosophical claims are judged recognizes that philosophy is always situated, in both the problems it addresses and the answers that make sense, but this need not sacrifice our ability to claim truth. Philosophy can successfully clarify and explain without those explanations needing to be transcendentally true for all time or completely adequate to all aspects of the object it studies."
When we speak, when we express, when we argue, we do it from our specific, situated identity. This identity supports and allows the development of our individuality by placing us within a context. This is definitely a blessing, yet it seems as if it may be a curse as well, especially for a philosopher.
According to dictionary.com, philosophy is "the rational investigation of the truths and principles of being, knowledge, or conduct." Alcoff's quote says that because of our situation, truth can be claimed but never for all time. Our particularity denies transcendence; only an abstraction can reach perfection. I feel that "expressed" would be a more appropriate word than "claimed."
Is philosophy simply art through the symbolism of words, or something more? Why investigate the truths of being if your views will not be seen as transcendently true but rather only an expression inevitably from a situation? What is the goal that philosophy is working towards?
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Yancy Article: Deconstruction of Internalized Predjudice
In Yancy's article, he discusses the interaction between a white woman, and himself, a black man when standing alone together in an elevator. Even though he is dressed in a suit and tie, the woman sees him as a black man. With this view comes a fear that stems from years of predjudice that views the black man as dangerous and unable to control his sexuality. Even if the white woman tries to deny these thoughts, her body language shows that she fears him none the less. Her body is tense, her hands are clammy, she grips her purse tightly, she avoids eye contact. Even in Yancy's class, a white student admits that when a black man walks on the same side of the street as her, she feels uncomfortable.
Society has historically, and continues to this day, to remind its citizens that black men are violent and are to be feared. Historically, a black man could be killed simply on the basis that he looked at a white woman in a way that inferred sexual prowess. Time and time again he was accused of raping the white woman, when in fact it was a white man who did the deed. Today, we see shows on t.v. like "Cops" that show people of minority groups acting in a violent manner and most often a white cop must forcefully throw them on the ground and handcuff them. Other examples of how the fear of black men is perpetuated is through news which shows the mug shot of the criminal. If the person has been caught, what is the point of broadcasting their face all over the country? The only result of such an action is the perpetuation of racial stereotyping and/or racial profiling, which then strenthens predjudicial fears.
What is even more concerning is when the black man himself internalizes the messages from society that he is indeed violent and to be feared. In my previous post I wrote about Alcoff's view of the divided self. One has a public identity, as well as a lived subjectivity. If the black man does not divide his lived subjectivity from his public identity, then his lived subjectivity will be shaped negatively because of the negative portrayal of the public identity. So instead of rejecting the view that he is violent by nature and cannot control his sexuality, he turns these traits into ones that he views as positive. One can see this occur within rap videos where the black male dominates black and white women, as well as carries a gun, or shows his masculinity through fighting. This is a defensive position in which the individual is reacting against those labels which he has been given. Unfortunately it does not allow the black man to liberate himself. Instead it only perpetuates the previously inscribed stereotypes and sends a false message to young black men saying what it is to be a black man.
Yancy's article is courageous in that it attempts to create a space to intellectually understand racism. Unless one can point to how racism is upheld, one can never eliminate it. Through recognition of it permeation within society Yancy creates opportunity to break away from these preconceived contructions and allows for the possibility of new modes of interaction.
Society has historically, and continues to this day, to remind its citizens that black men are violent and are to be feared. Historically, a black man could be killed simply on the basis that he looked at a white woman in a way that inferred sexual prowess. Time and time again he was accused of raping the white woman, when in fact it was a white man who did the deed. Today, we see shows on t.v. like "Cops" that show people of minority groups acting in a violent manner and most often a white cop must forcefully throw them on the ground and handcuff them. Other examples of how the fear of black men is perpetuated is through news which shows the mug shot of the criminal. If the person has been caught, what is the point of broadcasting their face all over the country? The only result of such an action is the perpetuation of racial stereotyping and/or racial profiling, which then strenthens predjudicial fears.
What is even more concerning is when the black man himself internalizes the messages from society that he is indeed violent and to be feared. In my previous post I wrote about Alcoff's view of the divided self. One has a public identity, as well as a lived subjectivity. If the black man does not divide his lived subjectivity from his public identity, then his lived subjectivity will be shaped negatively because of the negative portrayal of the public identity. So instead of rejecting the view that he is violent by nature and cannot control his sexuality, he turns these traits into ones that he views as positive. One can see this occur within rap videos where the black male dominates black and white women, as well as carries a gun, or shows his masculinity through fighting. This is a defensive position in which the individual is reacting against those labels which he has been given. Unfortunately it does not allow the black man to liberate himself. Instead it only perpetuates the previously inscribed stereotypes and sends a false message to young black men saying what it is to be a black man.
Yancy's article is courageous in that it attempts to create a space to intellectually understand racism. Unless one can point to how racism is upheld, one can never eliminate it. Through recognition of it permeation within society Yancy creates opportunity to break away from these preconceived contructions and allows for the possibility of new modes of interaction.
Alcoff: Divided Identity.
Alcoff focuses on the concept of identity. Through this focus she strives to create a new language surrounding identity in order to break through present thought barriers as well as define a language that is still under construction. She uses philosopher Martin Heidegger's terminology to decontruct old ways of viewing identity, while simultaneously opening new dialogues and modes of thinking
One point I found to be primarily interesting was Alcoff's explanation of one's racial or ethnic identity as a formulation of both what she calls the "public identity" and the "lived subjectivity". These terms show that there is a difference between how one creates their identity from the public views which are based primarily on visual classifications and assumptions, but also from one's own subjective experience of themselves. These two forms of knowing oneself are not seperate entitities, but rather are connected in a constant interplay.
The problem arises when the dominant influences in society denegrade one's public identity. In order for that individual to protect their lived subjectivity they must seperate their identity, thereby creating a divided self. An example of this is if one lives in a society such as the U.S. where light skin is portrayed as beautiful, but darker skin is viewed as undesirable. In this case a black woman, (especially for a woman because there is more pressure for her to be beautiful than for a man) must seperate herself from her public identity, in order to protect her lived subjectivity. If she does not divide her identity in this way she will most likely internalize the public identity, thus effecting her lived subjectivity to the point that she believes herself to be ugly, and therefore lesser of a person. So one is caught either in a position of a divided self, or believing negative connotations of oneself. Alcoff turns to Heidegger for help.
One point I found to be primarily interesting was Alcoff's explanation of one's racial or ethnic identity as a formulation of both what she calls the "public identity" and the "lived subjectivity". These terms show that there is a difference between how one creates their identity from the public views which are based primarily on visual classifications and assumptions, but also from one's own subjective experience of themselves. These two forms of knowing oneself are not seperate entitities, but rather are connected in a constant interplay.
The problem arises when the dominant influences in society denegrade one's public identity. In order for that individual to protect their lived subjectivity they must seperate their identity, thereby creating a divided self. An example of this is if one lives in a society such as the U.S. where light skin is portrayed as beautiful, but darker skin is viewed as undesirable. In this case a black woman, (especially for a woman because there is more pressure for her to be beautiful than for a man) must seperate herself from her public identity, in order to protect her lived subjectivity. If she does not divide her identity in this way she will most likely internalize the public identity, thus effecting her lived subjectivity to the point that she believes herself to be ugly, and therefore lesser of a person. So one is caught either in a position of a divided self, or believing negative connotations of oneself. Alcoff turns to Heidegger for help.
Monday, December 1, 2008
Are we hook's audience?
In Liberation Scenes bell hooks critiques the way the discipline of cultural studies is practiced on several levels. Basically cultural studies should be radical, linked to political struggle and voiced by the “cultural subjects (African-Americans, for example) that are written about.” (9) I wonder in how far she links the identity of a person to a capability or authority to speak concerning certain issues. On the one hand she points out, that it is important not to hold back with critiques for literature or media produced by blacks, just because they are black. To me this shows, that she does not believe that being part of a collective identity in itself makes you an expert on issues concerning that group. On the other hand she clearly voices that she feels pressured by white academics to write in a certain style and that “[a]t times, even the most progressive and well-meaning white folks, who are friends and allies, may not understand why a black writer has to say something in a certain way, or why we may not want to explain what has been said as though the first people we must always be addressing are privileged white readers.” (11) This quote raises the question whether for her there is a kind of language barrier between black and white progressive academics. hooks does not want to have to change her language or explain herself, which is fair enough. She does not write for a white audience first, as she points out, but wants her readers to ‘decolonize’ their minds. However our seminar reads her texts and is part of the academic institutions she criticizes. So – are we part of hook' s audience and can we 'truly' understand hooks?
social identities
In recent readings, there seems to be a combination of race and gender under social identities. What about the other social identities? Social identities that include race, gender, sex, age, class mobility, religion ... It really comes down to which side is more privileged and which sides are being oppressed. A person isn't just a women, but also Asian-American (race), middle-aged, working poor-class, non-handicapped, homosexual (sex).
bell hooks
In the first Chapter of Feminist Theory, hooks claims that oppressed women are unable to see the oppression because excessive limits are not imposed. In other words, because oppressed women in America still have basic freedoms, they are unable to see the injustices they face from society. I agree with this claim to a certain degree, but I think over time people acknowledge injustices they face and rebel because of it. Maybe the white-housewives were the first step in helping american women realize they are oppressed.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Monday Work
The bell hooks readings for Monday are now on eRes. For Monday we will discuss the two sets of selections from bell hooks. For Wed and Fri we will discuss the work of Linda Alcoff.
Monday, November 24, 2008
I thought it was an interesting move on the part of Baldwin to speak of the tyranny of the blacks over the whites toward the end of the work. Treated by whites as object-mirrors for white supremacy, through their struggles blacks also have the power to display the cruelty of the whites. He uses this problem as motivation for the whites to reconcile and integrate rather than continue a neurotic attempt to segregate themselves haphazardly.This struck me as a very Westian conjecture and definitely a reformist position, as opposed to the naturalized position of race he was begged to take up after speaking with the Muslims.
Friday, November 21, 2008
Cornel West on Obama
An interview with Cornel West from the Democracy Now show, on the topic of Obama's election, and more: http://www.democracynow.org/2008/11/19/cornel_west_on_the_election_of.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
The United States of Appiah
Is the recognition of race necessary to eliminate racism? In this class we've looked at that question from various angels.
West brings up a good point about the taxi problem. State neutrality is not going to solve everything. Nevertheless, I think it is the most practical solution and here's why: the only way to cure us of racism is to educate citizens and show them not that its simply wrong, but baseless. Under Appiah, we can work towards this on two fronts. First, we can even the playing field. We can make sure that everyone is treated the same under the law (equal tax dollars go to road work and teachers in bad neighborhoods, etc.). Second, we can educate people on the lack of evidence for any real racial categories. So here we are kind of attacking the stereotypes, by working towards solutions for crime, poverty, etc and also attacking the deeper rooted beliefs that accompany racist thinking. I think this would eventually trickle down to the mind's of would-be racists.
By West's acknowledgment of race he is only fueling the fire... Its better to just be color blind and fair and hope that the rest of society will catch up. programs like affirmative action, ect. only create resentment and further add to the (false) divisions in our society. And anyways, we cannot magically go into the mind's of racists and remove the idea of race. It needs to be educated out. We need to ditch the "us versus them" mentality, even when it has good intentions, because it will never solve anything.
Thoughts?
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
affirmative action
West states in his conclusion paragraph of Ch6, " My views on the necessity and limits of affirmative action in the present moment are informed by how substantive redistributive measures and human affirmative efforts can be best defended and expanded" (99). It would be interesting to apply affirmative action to current politics...
Race Traitor?
Cornel West's discussion of Clarence Thomas and his Senate confirmation hearing is an interesting discussion which seems to polarize the race debate. In the past I've hear Thomas referred to by African-Americans as a so-called "Race Traitor," and have always been disappointed in that kind of talk. The very concept of "Race Traitor" seems to go directly against what West is trying to get at. To say one is a race traitor is to suppose that a person who so happens to be of a certain race must adhere to the dominant discourse of that race's cause, and if said person does otherwise they are seen as a traitor to their own race. However, I think, and perhaps West would agree, that no one owes anything to their race, and in that sense Thomas is not a race traitor as some would argue. Though it may see questionable whether Thomas' decisions on the court or his political beliefs exist contrary to his Race's causes, in the end West would argue that it is not a valid question. We should then evaluate Thomas not on whether he will be a detriment to the African-American cause, but on the merit of his qualifications, which West obviously wishes to call into question.
West also alludes to Black Nationalism as the archetype of race thinking, as they supported Thomas because of his race, and also brings about the question of what exactly Black Nationalism represents. West seems to believe that Black Nationalism simply upholds the patriarchal system that is present in African-American societies.
West also alludes to Black Nationalism as the archetype of race thinking, as they supported Thomas because of his race, and also brings about the question of what exactly Black Nationalism represents. West seems to believe that Black Nationalism simply upholds the patriarchal system that is present in African-American societies.
Saturday, November 15, 2008
gender play? race play?
So, I'm just sitting here trying to write my essay and I came upon a thought that I found quite intriguing...
If we accept gender play as acceptable, what about race play? Butler, in discussing parody, writes, “In imitating gender, drag implicitly reveals the imitative structure of gender itself—as well as its contingency” (Butler 1990, 187). It plays upon the anatomy of the performer and the gender that is being performed. What would happen if we applied this to racial categories? Would it be less acceptable? In an interview Eddie Griffin said, “I think a lot of confusion came from the [difference] between ‘nigger’ and ‘nigga’…Let me elaborate… ‘Nigger,’ if you look it up in the dictionary, is a retarded, ignorant mother fucker. ‘Nigga’ is a term of endearment that brothers use amongst ourselves” (Eddie Griffin, 2004). Does this quote assume that race play is less acceptable than gender play? And how should we regard the theatrical performance of “blackface,” which began around the 1830s? How does this relate to drag? These are difficult questions to answer, questions that are attached to emotional histories.
It seems that though performative choice is in fact limited to what is appropriate and acceptable. Where do we draw the lines? If we cannot perform any identity we want to, what does our anatomy have to do with that which we perform? Butler seems to be arguing that our anatomy should not have anything to do with how we perform our identities—but the scrawny little white kid, no matter how endearing his motives, might get himself killed referring to his African American homies as “nigga.”
what do you think? worth pursuing?
If we accept gender play as acceptable, what about race play? Butler, in discussing parody, writes, “In imitating gender, drag implicitly reveals the imitative structure of gender itself—as well as its contingency” (Butler 1990, 187). It plays upon the anatomy of the performer and the gender that is being performed. What would happen if we applied this to racial categories? Would it be less acceptable? In an interview Eddie Griffin said, “I think a lot of confusion came from the [difference] between ‘nigger’ and ‘nigga’…Let me elaborate… ‘Nigger,’ if you look it up in the dictionary, is a retarded, ignorant mother fucker. ‘Nigga’ is a term of endearment that brothers use amongst ourselves” (Eddie Griffin, 2004). Does this quote assume that race play is less acceptable than gender play? And how should we regard the theatrical performance of “blackface,” which began around the 1830s? How does this relate to drag? These are difficult questions to answer, questions that are attached to emotional histories.
It seems that though performative choice is in fact limited to what is appropriate and acceptable. Where do we draw the lines? If we cannot perform any identity we want to, what does our anatomy have to do with that which we perform? Butler seems to be arguing that our anatomy should not have anything to do with how we perform our identities—but the scrawny little white kid, no matter how endearing his motives, might get himself killed referring to his African American homies as “nigga.”
what do you think? worth pursuing?
Friday, November 14, 2008
Does Race Matter?
So I was thinking (ut-oh) about my personal experiences with "race" and if it has mattered at all in my life. I'm not so sure it has. I'm not denying that their are serious problems elsewhere, I am only discussing what I have seen in my life.
I grew up with ultra liberal parents that were seemingly color blind. I played sports growing up, including high school basketball, which means half of your friends are black, and I never witnessed any racism. We were all pretty much color blind, or at least acted as if we were.
Last summer I brought my daughter (4) to a park and we saw a family there that lives on our court. Their girl is about 6 and they hadn't really played with eachother until that day. The family is black. When my wife got home from work, my daughter (who, in my bias opinion, is pretty savvy for a 4 year old) told my wife that she saw the girl that lives next to us at the park. There being a lot of kids in our 'hood, my wife wasn't sure who she was talking about. My daughter replied; "the one with the curly hair". She didn't even know to refer to her as black. Of all the features that could have stuck out to her, I would have thought that the most obvious would have been skin color, but apparently not. It was her hair.
This is pretty irrelevant to what we are discussing, but just one man's opinion: eliminating racial categories is feasible.
West: Race Matters
I very much so enjoyed reading West's book. He begins with hard statistics to remind people that things for black individuals and other groups in a state of poverty are not getting any better, in fact they have worsened. He discussses the breakdown of support and care within black communities and attributes the problem to a full on attack on black people's very being. He discusses what he calls a "prophetic framework" which is situated in grassroots organization creating change through the focus of love. So far I agree with what West has to say, but I hope that he will discuss the specifics of what a prophetic framework actually does to eleviate the suffering he has so clearly illustrated as undeniably real. For example, he critiques capitalism for making people into objects, as well as says that it perpetuates a hedonistic existence. So, does he think we need to move out of capitalism and into a new system of governing...and if so what system would that be? Or does he want to remain in capitalism but change the things that capitalism is currently endoring? Is this even possible? These are the question I have that I hope he will address in further chapters.
Stop being such a sore loser
The readings in the preface provided a disturbing thought that I will keep to myself for now, but the conclusion was that 'time' will eventually solve the racial and gender oppression problems. The idea is that the new generation will eventually replace the generation currently in power, and thus move forward with change. It is also affirmed on page 30.
In attempt to combine this thought with p27-28, West mentions the problem of worthlessness and self-loathing in black America. He uses the term angst, "Under these circumstances black existential angst derives from the lived experience of ontological wounds and emotional scars inflicted by white supremacist beliefs and images permeating U.S. society and culture" (West 27).
Why dwell in the notion of fear and dread? This exactly opposite of moving forward, but if the time isn't right, then one has no choice but to dwell...
In attempt to combine this thought with p27-28, West mentions the problem of worthlessness and self-loathing in black America. He uses the term angst, "Under these circumstances black existential angst derives from the lived experience of ontological wounds and emotional scars inflicted by white supremacist beliefs and images permeating U.S. society and culture" (West 27).
Why dwell in the notion of fear and dread? This exactly opposite of moving forward, but if the time isn't right, then one has no choice but to dwell...
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Obama on the Bell Curve, in 1994
Check out the following editorial by Barack Obama, written in 1994 for NPR. May be of interest to anyone following Obama and to those of you writing your papers on Obama.
http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2008/09/barack-obama-on-bell-curve.php
http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2008/09/barack-obama-on-bell-curve.php
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Monday Assignments: Replying to Appiah
Monday Assignment - Part I - Replying to Appiah
Here is a list of a few readings which are (or can be construed as) responses to Appiah's views on race one more selection of pages from Appiah's book further relevant to our discussions. These are now (or soon will be) available on our course eRes page (with the exception of the Taylor and Appiah selections in our books).
Monday Assignment - Part II - Research Paper Intros
Also, please bring in two copies of a draft/working introductory paragraph for your essay where you lay out a topic, set a problem in relation to your topic, and present a clearly-articulated thesis statement in which you show how you will respond to that problem in the essay. This should be one paragraph maximum and as such should be no longer than one page (double-spaced, 12 pt. Times, standard margins, your name at the top, etc.).
Here is a list of a few readings which are (or can be construed as) responses to Appiah's views on race one more selection of pages from Appiah's book further relevant to our discussions. These are now (or soon will be) available on our course eRes page (with the exception of the Taylor and Appiah selections in our books).
- Sundstrom, Ron. 2002. “'Racial' Nominalism” in Journal of Social Philosophy 33, no. 2, 2002: 193-210.
- Yancy, George. 2008. “Elevators, Social Spaces, and Racism: A Philosophical Analysis” in Philosophy and Social Criticism 34, no. 8, Oct., 2008: 843-76.
- Taylor, Paul. 2004. pp. 125-142 of Race: A Philosophical Introduction.
- Appiah, K. Anthony. 2005. pp.155-65, 192-99 of The Ethics of Identity.
- Group 1 responds to Sundstrom
- Group 2 responds to Yancy
- Group 3 responds to the Taylor selections from Race
- Group 4 responds to the pages from Appiah's book
Monday Assignment - Part II - Research Paper Intros
Also, please bring in two copies of a draft/working introductory paragraph for your essay where you lay out a topic, set a problem in relation to your topic, and present a clearly-articulated thesis statement in which you show how you will respond to that problem in the essay. This should be one paragraph maximum and as such should be no longer than one page (double-spaced, 12 pt. Times, standard margins, your name at the top, etc.).
Replies to Appiah: Sundstrom
Sundstrom challenges two features of Appiah's thinking about race: A) Appiah's metaphysical skepticism then constructionism (his position appears to be shifting here) according to which racial categories are at worst illusory (skepticism) and at best mere effects of contingent social processes (constructionism); B) Appiah's moral eliminativism according to which we should refrain from racial thinking at least from the appropriate moral standpoint of political justification.
Focusing primarily on (A), Sundstrom invokes a "metaphysical pluralism" which he develops in conversation with Hacking and Root. According to this view, there is no one single correct theory of reality (such as would be held by the "metaphysical monist"), but rather multiple correct theories for multiple practices. Therefore, the fact that "race" has no viable metaphysical standing in the view of biology or physics does not mean that there is no domain of practice or science in which "race" is real on a viable metaphysics.
Sundstrom finds the thought that "race" is constructed needlessly modest in conceding the term "real" to the biologist and physicist only. Sundstrom suggests that races can be real, too, even if their reality is not of the same kind as quarks and genes.
Since Sundstrom does not focus much attention on (B), it will be helpful to consider the implications of his revision of (A) for (B). Given that Sundstrom is a kind of "racial realist" (on the basis of a metaphysical pluralism), what viable normative positions might he take? Does his "realism" push against the eliminativism of Appiah, Zack, and Webster? What about realism and reformism? Is there anything in Sundstrom's brand of realism that might help us avoid a conservative moral position toward race according to which everything is fine as we have it now.
Focusing primarily on (A), Sundstrom invokes a "metaphysical pluralism" which he develops in conversation with Hacking and Root. According to this view, there is no one single correct theory of reality (such as would be held by the "metaphysical monist"), but rather multiple correct theories for multiple practices. Therefore, the fact that "race" has no viable metaphysical standing in the view of biology or physics does not mean that there is no domain of practice or science in which "race" is real on a viable metaphysics.
Sundstrom finds the thought that "race" is constructed needlessly modest in conceding the term "real" to the biologist and physicist only. Sundstrom suggests that races can be real, too, even if their reality is not of the same kind as quarks and genes.
Since Sundstrom does not focus much attention on (B), it will be helpful to consider the implications of his revision of (A) for (B). Given that Sundstrom is a kind of "racial realist" (on the basis of a metaphysical pluralism), what viable normative positions might he take? Does his "realism" push against the eliminativism of Appiah, Zack, and Webster? What about realism and reformism? Is there anything in Sundstrom's brand of realism that might help us avoid a conservative moral position toward race according to which everything is fine as we have it now.
Replies to Appiah: Yancy
Yancy's article, though not a direct reply to Appiah, can be read as an argument against both metaphysical skepticism and (presumably) normative eliminativism insofar as Yancy's core concern here is to show that race is real as "existentially lived" and "socially embodied". His analysis of a specific social situation, namely riding in elevators, reveals thar race is sometimes very much part of the lived and bodily experience in our everyday practices.
Do you agree with Yancy's claims about the fact of race being a part of our lived experience? Is there room for debating this claim? Might we see his assertion of a fact of lived experience as instead an interpretation of a past experience? If so, does that give us any reason (or indeed any room) to doubt his claims about the reality of race?
(Those taking the existentialism and phenomenology class, by the way, might wish to consider how Yancy's article offers a specific take on some of the core themes of these philosophical traditions. Yancy could be seen as emphasizing the reality of racial existence whereas de Beauvoir was emphasizing the reality of our existence as sexed and gendered beings. And while Merleau-Ponty does not touch on race in his major bodies we might want to see Yancy's attention to one of the most noticeable features of our bodies (our skin) as quite naturally following from Merleau-Ponty's emphasis on the embodied quality of our lived experiences.)
Do you agree with Yancy's claims about the fact of race being a part of our lived experience? Is there room for debating this claim? Might we see his assertion of a fact of lived experience as instead an interpretation of a past experience? If so, does that give us any reason (or indeed any room) to doubt his claims about the reality of race?
(Those taking the existentialism and phenomenology class, by the way, might wish to consider how Yancy's article offers a specific take on some of the core themes of these philosophical traditions. Yancy could be seen as emphasizing the reality of racial existence whereas de Beauvoir was emphasizing the reality of our existence as sexed and gendered beings. And while Merleau-Ponty does not touch on race in his major bodies we might want to see Yancy's attention to one of the most noticeable features of our bodies (our skin) as quite naturally following from Merleau-Ponty's emphasis on the embodied quality of our lived experiences.)
Replies to Appiah: Taylor
In this selection Taylor details three arguments against racial thinking, the third of which is modeled after Appiah's eliminativist argument as rooted in an ethics of individual autonomy (section 4.2.2, 127ff.). Taylor calls this the argument from "self-development" according to which racial identities can often function like limiting scripts which act as obstacles to our capacities for forming our own plans of life.
Taylor responds to this argument by arguing that racial concepts function more like "parameters" than "limits" (to employ Appiah's [2005, 110ff.] terminology). He tours through some important concepts, particularly Du Bois's concept of "double consciousness" and Zack's concept of "microdiversity", before concluding that we need to continue to employ racial concepts in our public thinking in order to make sense of and address the existential realities of race in our lives. He concludes, "The state shapes public discourse in quite profound ways, and finding oneself written out of the official narratives of national life that this discourse disseminates may seem less like an opportunity to celebrate oneself and one's community in private than like an erasure" (141).
This poses at least two questions:
Taylor responds to this argument by arguing that racial concepts function more like "parameters" than "limits" (to employ Appiah's [2005, 110ff.] terminology). He tours through some important concepts, particularly Du Bois's concept of "double consciousness" and Zack's concept of "microdiversity", before concluding that we need to continue to employ racial concepts in our public thinking in order to make sense of and address the existential realities of race in our lives. He concludes, "The state shapes public discourse in quite profound ways, and finding oneself written out of the official narratives of national life that this discourse disseminates may seem less like an opportunity to celebrate oneself and one's community in private than like an erasure" (141).
This poses at least two questions:
- What are the 'lived existential' realities of race to which Taylor seems to want to defer?
- How can public recognition of these racial realities help us address the injustices that might in some instances flow from their deployment? Could public recognition in fact function in the opposite way so as to solidify the injustices that flow from the deployment of racial thinking? How might we adjudicate between these two theories of how race functions when politically recognized?
More from Appiah: Antidiscrimination Law
Recall Appiah's favored liberal ideal of neutrality as equal respect for identities in the form of neutral justifications. Two distinctions are crucial here:
Does the recognition of identity in (a) sit well with Appiah's overall eliminiativism about racial thinking? If you think it does fit well, explain how so. If you think it does not fit well, describe where and why you see a tension here.
- We are (at least in the first place) neutral in terms of justifications or reasons for laws, not in terms of the outcomes of these laws.
- We are neutral about identities, rather than say citizens or even more simply beliefs (the latter would insist that we have to find a way of being neutral about any belief that anyone in a given polity has, you might also construe this in Rawlsian fashion as 'neutralism about reasonable beliefs').
Does the recognition of identity in (a) sit well with Appiah's overall eliminiativism about racial thinking? If you think it does fit well, explain how so. If you think it does not fit well, describe where and why you see a tension here.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Two Contrasting Examples
When using the two examples of the left-handed person and the weekend, Appiah has attempted to demonstrate how it is not always the regard for a given identity which explains one's disadvantage or what might seem to be a lack of neutrality behind state acts. Perhaps a bit of a tangent, but I would like to examine these two examples in contrast to one another. Firstly, Appiah shows that while the left-handed person might be disadvantaged in some sense, as it seems most of the public world is geared toward the right-handed individual (scissors, doorknobs), it is not the fact that they are regarded as left-handed that they are at a disadvantage. The author holds that it is simply a matter that things need to be done with either the left or the right hand, and given the fact that the majority of individuals are right handed that is the way things have come to be. Then he goes to make this demonstration by using the example of the Saturday/Sunday model of the weekend, which might seem to favor the Christian religion over other systems of belief; “When it comes to Sabbatarian issues, the fact that our weekend coincides with the religious requirements of the Christian majority doesn't display a failure of neutrality as equal respect, provided what accounts for the fact is that it suits a majority...and not that some minorities are disadvantaged by it. If a majority of Americans became Muslims and Friday mosque became a majority institution, it would not reflect a lack of regard for Christians if we shifted the days when government offices were closed to Friday and Saturday” (92). While it seems hard to see how anyone would disagree that many things need to be done with either the right or left hand, we can understand that the use of the right or left hand is a necessity for certain actions. But if we look at the latter example we might not see this same relationship. Does it seem to be a matter of necessity that religious observance take place and specific days are designated to accommodate that necessity? It seems apparent that some would not see this to be the case. One might try to add, as does Appiah, that it is also a matter of convenience that there are two designated days off "and that, for coordination reasons, people cannot be permitted to take their two days in seven on whichever day they choose" (92). However, this might appear ad hoc to the original reason offered behind the Saturday/Sunday model, viz. the Sabbath with a Christian majority. Don’t get me wrong (I’m just as big of a fan of the weekend as anybody), but what I’m arguing is that Appiah’s latter example doesn’t seem to hold vis-Ã -vis necessity as does the first, and in turn, does not support his claim as strongly
Appiah: Structure v. Agency
So just to follow up on our discussion...
I support Appiah's model (via Kant) of the two standpoints and here's why:
Looking at structure v. agency as social science's problem of freedom versus determinism is helpful and I think that Appiah gives a strong case for his position. Holding that either position is somehow canceled out by the other (separatist theory) is problematic because both are relevant in our lives. As Appiah says, they are helpful for explaining different things. As I suggested in class, it might be useful to think of agency (freedom) to be concerned with reasons for actions ("why" questions) whereas structure (determinism) is concerned with causes of actions ("how" questions). This makes it a lot easier to break down, because all you have to do is ask yourself what kind of question is being asked and you'll know which sort of answer is relevant.
If you think about a murder case, the reason for the action will result in a question like "why did he do it?". Here we'll probably want to give an answer that appeals to the agency (freedom) of the murderer, maybe stating some possible motive. On the flip side, the cause of the action will result in questions like "how did he do it?". Here, we'd analyze the hard evidence... You get the picture. For me, there is no blurry area.
In class, issues were brought up about there being underling "why" questions that will eventually come up in the "how" line of reasoning and causal explanations. I don't agree with this and I'd challenge anyone to come up with a solid example. We might want to ask "how forensic science came to be" or "how the court system decided to place precedence on hard evidence" etc. When we start asking "why forensic science came to be" we are asking a very different kind of question and it is not connected to the former. This is why Appiah suggests that they might both be relevant, but as different standpoints, we cannot simultaneously look at both.
Although I agree with Appiah when it comes to identity and other issues at the human level, I would go a step further and say that "why" questions are often misleading and are unfounded in such a way that you can get absurd answers when we apply them at higher levels. I fear I've already strayed too far off course, but as a final example we ought to think about religion and science because that is really at the heart of this debate. Consider the questions "how are we here?" and "why are we here?". To me, the how question if far more relevant because we can look to science (a seemingly more objective and better founded approach to theory) to help us answer the question. We can look to astrophysics, astrobiology, cosmology, geology.. these are all helpful is thinking about how we are here. When we ask why, there are several more possible answers, all equal in there probability because there are unfounded. Answering the why question is largely a religious endeavor (and as such it has several problems that go way beyond the scope of this class). Maybe it might be too much to say that "why" questions at this level necessarily delve into metaphysics, but I'll say it anyways.
To bring this back home, I think the "how" of identity is the superior of the two standpoints, but this does not mean that we should ignore the "why". "Why" questions at this (human) level imply free will and that is something that I am comfortable talking about. The point for Appiah, I think, is that we should not fall into the trap of partialism and attempt to combined the two. They are separate and each have their own merit, albeit of varying degrees ; )
What do you think?
Monday, November 3, 2008
Nature Vs. Nurture
Nature vs. Nurture
I don’t really have a question, but I would like to bring up the nature vs. nurture debate in the structure of social identities. Unfortunately, this segment heavily deals with identities from the social aspect, so it is leaning more towards the nurture position. Appiah states, “It follows that what I can do intentionally depends on what concepts I have available to me; and among the concepts that may shape my action is the concept of a certain kind of person and the behavior appropriate to a person of that kind”. The problem continues on to expectation and behavior, since the meaning of identification is the process through which individuals shape their projects – by reference to available labels, available identities (65-66).
Is our behavior influenced by the general label (media), or is expectation of the label referenced by the molding of identification? In other words is our actions and behavior influenced by the general public and media or are the general public/ media influenced by the individual?
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Do our ethical positions = elitism?
No matter what we think about the status of racial categories or what we ought to do with them from here on out, what we are attempting to do is persuade other people to think the same way. I ask; what epistemic position are we in to decide that for everyone?
I, for one, am not prepared to tell anyone how they can identify themselves. The only thing I am willing to address is how I identify myself and how I categorize other individuals, neither of which make any sense in the public sphere. They are private matters. That is not to say that we cannot talk about them, it just means that they are not positions I intend to persuade other minds into adopting.
So what do you think? Are you a conservative, a reformist or an elimitivist? Do you think all of these positions are necessarily elitist?
Friday, October 31, 2008
Lecture Notes & Slides
Slide presentations for a number of the class lectures introducing our various texts are now up:
- Judith Butler
- Sally Haslanger
- Paul Taylor
- Kwame Anthony Appiah
- Cornel West (which we'll come to in a few weeks)
Ethics of Identity: What is it to choose freely?
What is it to choose freely? This is a question Appiah asks in relation to the topic of ones autonomy. Autonomy in its bare bones, is the belief of ones being as independent, shaped by oneself, and free to think and choose for oneself. However I, as well as Appiah, question this. How is it possible to truly choose anything for oneself if the very thing I call self is a social being, formed and shaped by the experiences I have in a world of context. Is a new, and independent thought even possible to have? Where does one even draw the line between ones own individual self and the communal society we all exist within? These questions directly tie into the politics of liberalism because liberalism places importance on an individual's right to be free. What would a right to be free look like, if our very being is not chosen in free will, but rather formed in a social context. How can we have any right toward freedom of choice if our thoughts are not autonomous in themselves? These are just a few questions that come up for me when reading about these topics.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
In Chapter two, Appiah introduces arguments against autonomy, then illustrates why the two standpoints principle is a potential answer to reconciling agency and structure, subject and society by insisting upon the mutually constitutive character of each.
Appiah uses Tolstoy's character, Stepan Arkadyich to elucidate a portrait of what some might call "inauthenticity"--he fails to construct any rational beliefs that are his own; he merely takes up the beliefs of those to whom he responds (Appiah will argue against this later in the chapter).
Appiah asks: "Just how autonomous do you have to be to have true autonomy?" For Appiah, autonomy requires that one has the capacity to reflect; it doesn't necessarily imply that they exercise this ability on a regular basis. He references Raz, who calls the autonomous person someone who is "capable of understanding how various choices will have considerable and lasting impact on his life" (39). This does not mean premeditation or a very deliberate style of one's life...
Appiah dismisses the notion of "strong autonomy" as being too exalted and demanding--making autonomy look "outlandishly exigent" (38).
Johnstons example of Michael as having agency, but lacking personal autonomy is also argued against by Appiah. Michael still has the capacity to be reflective--he is aware of his conditions, opportunities, and abilities.
In the section "Autonomy as Intolerance" Appiah introduces arguments that suggest an apparent discord between autonomy and diversity. John Gray argues that autonomy is pitted against diversity in that is devalues the life of the nun, the professional soldier, or the passionate artist devoted to his life’s work. He is trying to protect the traditionalist who would actually reject his “voluntaristic model of self-choice or self creation that Gray evidently plumps for, and it is a curious suggestion that “self creation” is less (rather than more) burdensome an ideal than autonomy” (42).
Mill, as interpreted by Appiah, wants to say that diversity can be recognized and incorporated in the way we think about liberty. Moral pluralism is not in tension with political liberalism, as Gray would warn, rather it is a tribute to it.
Appiah says that one does not have to subscribe to autonomism to have autonomy. To be autonomous, one need not have the concept of autonomy at all. We should not confuse the capacity to reflect and its actual exercise. Also, freedom from manipulation does not necessarily mean freedom from social pressures. Social pressures are a way of shaping us as individuals—to have a completely independent mind would be to have no fixtures, no values or interests—it would be an inhuman mind. Autonomy comes in matters of degrees. Appiah uses Taylor to help reconcile subject-centered and social-centered accounts. The way we practice should be viewed as a “continual interpretation and reinterpretation of what the rule really means” (54). [We are engaged on practices as beings who act in and on the world]
Kant’s “Two Standpoints”: (1) we are natural beings as a part of the natural realm, “subject to theoretical explanations in terms of natural causes” (the sensible world) and (2) all men think themselves to have free will; “for purposes of action the footpath of freedom if the only one on which we can make use of reason in out conduct” (the intelligible world). These are not planes of reality, they are merely two standpoints, two points of view. Kant says that we have to “act as if freedom is possible even though we can’t provide any theoretical justification for it…it can’t be explained, only defended” (56). This suggests that we should give up our attempt to see structure and agency as competing for the same causal space; they belong to two distinct standpoints, each with a practical purpose. The answers we give depend upon the stories we want to tell and the positions we want to defend. Appiah suggests that what we should “ask of a theory is that is be adequate to its own constitutive project—that it earns its as ifs” (60). He ends saying that “to take autonomy seriously…is not without consequences. It proposes a politics that regards persons as ends, as possessing dignity and inherent worth. It proposes a social order conductive to some version of individuality” (61).
Appiah uses Tolstoy's character, Stepan Arkadyich to elucidate a portrait of what some might call "inauthenticity"--he fails to construct any rational beliefs that are his own; he merely takes up the beliefs of those to whom he responds (Appiah will argue against this later in the chapter).
Appiah asks: "Just how autonomous do you have to be to have true autonomy?" For Appiah, autonomy requires that one has the capacity to reflect; it doesn't necessarily imply that they exercise this ability on a regular basis. He references Raz, who calls the autonomous person someone who is "capable of understanding how various choices will have considerable and lasting impact on his life" (39). This does not mean premeditation or a very deliberate style of one's life...
Appiah dismisses the notion of "strong autonomy" as being too exalted and demanding--making autonomy look "outlandishly exigent" (38).
Johnstons example of Michael as having agency, but lacking personal autonomy is also argued against by Appiah. Michael still has the capacity to be reflective--he is aware of his conditions, opportunities, and abilities.
In the section "Autonomy as Intolerance" Appiah introduces arguments that suggest an apparent discord between autonomy and diversity. John Gray argues that autonomy is pitted against diversity in that is devalues the life of the nun, the professional soldier, or the passionate artist devoted to his life’s work. He is trying to protect the traditionalist who would actually reject his “voluntaristic model of self-choice or self creation that Gray evidently plumps for, and it is a curious suggestion that “self creation” is less (rather than more) burdensome an ideal than autonomy” (42).
Mill, as interpreted by Appiah, wants to say that diversity can be recognized and incorporated in the way we think about liberty. Moral pluralism is not in tension with political liberalism, as Gray would warn, rather it is a tribute to it.
Appiah says that one does not have to subscribe to autonomism to have autonomy. To be autonomous, one need not have the concept of autonomy at all. We should not confuse the capacity to reflect and its actual exercise. Also, freedom from manipulation does not necessarily mean freedom from social pressures. Social pressures are a way of shaping us as individuals—to have a completely independent mind would be to have no fixtures, no values or interests—it would be an inhuman mind. Autonomy comes in matters of degrees. Appiah uses Taylor to help reconcile subject-centered and social-centered accounts. The way we practice should be viewed as a “continual interpretation and reinterpretation of what the rule really means” (54). [We are engaged on practices as beings who act in and on the world]
Kant’s “Two Standpoints”: (1) we are natural beings as a part of the natural realm, “subject to theoretical explanations in terms of natural causes” (the sensible world) and (2) all men think themselves to have free will; “for purposes of action the footpath of freedom if the only one on which we can make use of reason in out conduct” (the intelligible world). These are not planes of reality, they are merely two standpoints, two points of view. Kant says that we have to “act as if freedom is possible even though we can’t provide any theoretical justification for it…it can’t be explained, only defended” (56). This suggests that we should give up our attempt to see structure and agency as competing for the same causal space; they belong to two distinct standpoints, each with a practical purpose. The answers we give depend upon the stories we want to tell and the positions we want to defend. Appiah suggests that what we should “ask of a theory is that is be adequate to its own constitutive project—that it earns its as ifs” (60). He ends saying that “to take autonomy seriously…is not without consequences. It proposes a politics that regards persons as ends, as possessing dignity and inherent worth. It proposes a social order conductive to some version of individuality” (61).
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Appiah, MIll, and Liberalism
Appiah uses Mill's concept of Liberalism in the first chapter of Ethics of Identity. Mill attempts to fuse utilitarianism and romanticism through his concept of Liberalism. This is not Liberalism in the sense of right/left politics; its is a liberalism in a sense of a split between public and private spheres. The private sphere is what individuals do in their private spaces(i.e. Home). The public sphere can be recognized as government action, or even being in the class room. Certain constraints are imposed on individuals in the public sphere that are not imposed in the private sphere. Mill uses his 'harm principle' as a tool for the public sphere to distinguish when intervening on individuals private spheres is warranted. Appiah points out that Mill's harm principle is vague is what constitutes as a harm, but goes something like this: Harm can be distinguished when one individual prevents another individual from pursuing their own projects. The problem I see, and Appiah, with this principle is that one person's project may directly prevent/oppose another persons project. An example of this could be an employee for amedical marijuana club having a project to help people in pain, and DEA agent having a project to shut down marijuana clubs. The 'harm principle' works with simple situations, but not with complexities(such as the complex issue of federal vs state power within our own country). Even though in parts of Chapter 1, Appiah appears to be criticizing Mill's conception of liberalism, he seems to rely on it.
Individuality and the State
In the first chapter of The Ethics of Identity revolves around john Stuart Mill's views on identity or more specifically individuality.
Appiah talks about how Mill's ideas of how government should interconnect with individuality.
In the section Individuality and the State he believes that Mills has been understood very differently even by liberal theorist. Appiah uses many quotes from mill to get his point across.
here is his argument through quotation.
"the first element of a good government, being the virtue and intelligence of the human beings composing the community, the most important point of excellence which any form of government can possess is to promote the virtue and intelligence of its people" (26).
"What more or better can be said of any condition of human affairs, than it brings humans being themselves nearer to the best thing they can be? or what worse can be said of any obstruction to good, than that it prevents this?" (27).
It is not a reclusive government or a restrictive one. The term used is positive support. It is trying to give advice and spread information so that people can come to a greater fulfillment.
"A government, instead of issuing a command and enforcing it by penalties, adopts the course so seldom reverted to by government, and of which such important use might be made, that of giving advice or promulgating information; and when, leaving individuals free to use their own means of pursuing any object of general interest, the government, not meddling with them, but not trusting the object solely to their care, establishes, side by side with their arrangements, an agency of its own for a like purpose" (31, 32).
I just realized that it is probably one of the longest sentences i have ever read that still makes sense. Way to go Mills!!!
ok... back to the topic at hand. The idea is that a government should not tell you what is good and what is bad but it should have your best interests in mind. By having your best interests in mind it should look to what you are doing so that you are safe. It should, if i am correct in my understanding, support the endeavor and get involved, not to the point of control but say giving grants or providing workspace. I believe that this is not toward the individual but more toward the public in general. If people start becoming really interested in saving the forests then the government should find some way to help save the forest.
This sort of positive support is an interesting conception of government, but I think it takes government out of its context. I might be wrong on my history here, but just by thinking it out it would seem that government was created initially for only two reasons.
1. to protect us from external forces or threats: wars, global warming, etc...
2. To protect us from ourselves: justice, law etc...
These to things both do one essential thing, take our worry away. It gives us structure and a faith so that we can focus on other things.
I would think that this would still apply today. We have added many things to the American constitution but i think most of them fall under one of the two categories. The definition of what exactly we need protection from is a completely different discussion.
I just believe that the first role of a government is not to enhance the well-being of its people but to manipulate the world in a way that makes well-being possible.
Establishing the two things initial roles of government I believe are the first roles of government.
I think that part of protecting people from each other is to tell them what to do.
Friday, October 24, 2008
Vestigital Term: Race
I acknowledge that the term race exists within our social language and without it we could not make certain forms of oppression, certain social phenomena intelligible. However, it seems to me that race is really a misnomer when we talk about most forms of oppression. There are other terms that explain oppression more fully and point to the real roots of it; like ethnicity, caste, class, nationality, etc. Race is a term that is like a vestigital organ; we still have it only because we misguidedly think we still need it, the way people still cling to outmoded ideas like the world being flat or evolution being false (the bible being the true representation). Time to move on and evolve.
Ethical Eliminativism of Racial Talk Is Not Practical- Yet.
In order to give a well thought out feedback on the question of whether racial thinking (the use of racial concepts, language etc.) is ethical or not, and whether we ought to continue this in practice, it is important for one to examine two other themes within the philosophical study of race: the metaphysics/semantics of race and the history/genealogy of racialism. The latter explores racialism through the genealogical method, so one may better grasp how race has unfolded throughout history to emerge this ‘race’ we see in modernity (which is none-the-less still evolving), while the former explores the question of what race actually is. Taylor believes that race is a method of categorization that assigns mean to bodies and bloodlines (pg 15), although it has been strongly discredited as holding scientific/anthropologic validity. Ultimately, this leaves race as something that exists in a social aspect, but hardly holds as having a true moral nature attached to these groupings of humans based on somewhat loose, superficial shared characteristics like physical attributes and social and economic positioning. The philosophical examination on the genealogy of race provides a mapping of the construction of racialism, its exponential webbing as a means for a politically oppressive tool and a means for domination, leading Taylor to ultimately conclude that race is real and most often socially objective without being ontologically objective. In other words: Race does not exist in the sense that Black, White, Yellow, Red have an actual natural referent with varying meaning in each of these categories, but rather that the continual practice of categorization of humans in this manor has reflected in a racial landscape with real social consequences. It is because of these real consequences that racial thinking should not be deemed as unethical. Because the construction of racial concepts within society have resulted in such real injustices in certain groups of people, although their group’s ontological status is not objective, it can not follow we can just be “color bind” because we know that racialism is a human construct that need not exist. Some argue for ethical eliminativism of racial thinking because race-thinking inevitably leads to racism. A second for ethical eliminativism is called the argument from political realism. This argument states that “race needlessly complicates struggles for justice” and claims that is encourages “activists to ignore the complexity of the issues that their constituents face” (pg 125). A third argument for ethical eliminitivism is based on the notion that racial thinking limits one’s individual pursuits. Taylor answers all of these arguments in contending that keeping racial thinking will better enable us to right the wrongs of classical racialism, meaning racial thinking is ethical to continue in practice. His belief in this is most founded in the idea that we need the concept of race to help us note and track the consequences of racism (126) that its genealogical story has produced. How could the ethical eliminativist not see that it is hardly useful to abandon racial thinking immediately/ altogether when they take the foundation of their stance for elimination to begin with on the fact that race has been horribly oppressive and had very real impacts on people in this world? How can we combat and right these injustices with abandoning the very concepts that explain their cause? Taylor explains that race is a social construct, which means that we have learned which practices need to be habituated to further its existence, therefore we could also unlearn these practices, eventually loosing our distinction between colored races if we can “summon the political will” (127). Racial thinking is not unethical because one must go through race, dissect it, and pick it apart to truly get rid of it and make right the real social consequences of the way race has been applied through out history. Only if this is more fully understood by the people around the world can race and notions of race be eliminated conceptually and practically.
racist thinking is unethical
Taking the position that racial thinking is unethical, our current social norms become very problematic. Within our own government, racial thinking has been used as a tool. Police could stop and search someone just if they fit into a suspicious profile; which is mainly determined by race. I believe it is completely unethical for one to stand on a threshold and prejudicially judge another based on epidermal differences. Bringing Kant into this discussion; his categorical imperative further shows how unethical racial thinking can be. If a universal law existed that race was reason enough to prejudicially judge someone, this world would be very problematic. Racial thinking is blind in recognizing personality and the inner characteristics of individuals.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Unconscious Racism in the Election
Here is a link to a useful op-ed piece in the Times about the way unconscious racism may play a role in the election: "Racism without Racists".
From the piece: "...the evidence is that Senator Obama is facing what scholars have dubbed 'racism without racists.' The racism is difficult to measure, but a careful survey completed last month by Stanford University, with The Associated Press and Yahoo, suggested that Mr. Obama’s support would be about six percentage points higher if he were white. That’s significant but surmountable."
From the piece: "...the evidence is that Senator Obama is facing what scholars have dubbed 'racism without racists.' The racism is difficult to measure, but a careful survey completed last month by Stanford University, with The Associated Press and Yahoo, suggested that Mr. Obama’s support would be about six percentage points higher if he were white. That’s significant but surmountable."
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Why Paul Taylor thinks we need to hang onto the term "Race"
Brief Summary:
Paul Taylor, in the later portion of Chapter Two, argues against the notion that the race concept is outdated and should be abandoned for alternative notions such as ethnicity, class, caste, and gender (to name a few).
Taylor begins his argument by distinguishing between race and ethnicity. He says, "'race' points to the body, 'ethnicity' points to culture" (54). He insists on the value of being explicit and clear about what we are actually referring to when we mention 'race' or 'ethnicity;' we should not simply group shared culture with appearance and ancestry. Granted, it is true that they are indeed often grouped together, but ethnicities are not always racialized (and vice versa).
Class is more striaghtforward, and simply has to do with social or economic status. Why do we need to keep the concept of race when we can simply refer to different classes of society?
As was done in the South not too long ago, we can simply say that there is the upper class (that will mean white) and the lower class (that will mean non-white). The counter to this is very obvious: each race has its rich, middle, and poor class. Each class has a variety of different races involved. Even though a certain class may be more representative of a certain race, one cannot say one class is absolutely one race (and vice versa).
Caste, as well, often seems to take the place of race in social discourse. Taylor says, "Caste is principally about hereditary hierarchies that are not indexed to the morphology of the body" (63). Caste is not about what you look like but rather what your family ties are. Castes have the possibility to be racialized.
What does Taylor think about gender? He thinks gender is "a matter of having, or of being supposed or predicted to have, the social and psychological features--the impulses, the social roles and location--that are appropriate for people of a certain sex" (63). Dominant conceptions of gender spread through various forms of media and form a "mainstream" conception of gender.
Taylor argues that "race is a mode in which gender is lived, and vice versa" (65). What he means is that races can be depicted in gendered terms (e.g. certain races can be described as being more feminine than others) and that certain gender ideals can be shown in racial terms (i.e. gendered indiviudals of different races, in lieu of being that race, are expected to represent a certain type of masculinty or femininity).
Taylor wants us to keep distinct vocabularies for distinct purposes. He feels "race" to be a term important and useful enough to be hung onto. We, as humans, are many things at the same time: a race, gender, age, sexual orientation, and class (to name a few among a cornucopia of other things).
Questions:
Should the term "race" be used in certain circumstances and not others? When is it positive for someone to reveal information about their race, when is it negative, and when is it simply unnecessary? This question could be extended further to include ethnicity, class, caste, and/or gender. To rephrase, how much is too much in regard to use of these terms in society today, and how much is too little? Is there an equilibrium?
Paul Taylor, in the later portion of Chapter Two, argues against the notion that the race concept is outdated and should be abandoned for alternative notions such as ethnicity, class, caste, and gender (to name a few).
Taylor begins his argument by distinguishing between race and ethnicity. He says, "'race' points to the body, 'ethnicity' points to culture" (54). He insists on the value of being explicit and clear about what we are actually referring to when we mention 'race' or 'ethnicity;' we should not simply group shared culture with appearance and ancestry. Granted, it is true that they are indeed often grouped together, but ethnicities are not always racialized (and vice versa).
Class is more striaghtforward, and simply has to do with social or economic status. Why do we need to keep the concept of race when we can simply refer to different classes of society?
As was done in the South not too long ago, we can simply say that there is the upper class (that will mean white) and the lower class (that will mean non-white). The counter to this is very obvious: each race has its rich, middle, and poor class. Each class has a variety of different races involved. Even though a certain class may be more representative of a certain race, one cannot say one class is absolutely one race (and vice versa).
Caste, as well, often seems to take the place of race in social discourse. Taylor says, "Caste is principally about hereditary hierarchies that are not indexed to the morphology of the body" (63). Caste is not about what you look like but rather what your family ties are. Castes have the possibility to be racialized.
What does Taylor think about gender? He thinks gender is "a matter of having, or of being supposed or predicted to have, the social and psychological features--the impulses, the social roles and location--that are appropriate for people of a certain sex" (63). Dominant conceptions of gender spread through various forms of media and form a "mainstream" conception of gender.
Taylor argues that "race is a mode in which gender is lived, and vice versa" (65). What he means is that races can be depicted in gendered terms (e.g. certain races can be described as being more feminine than others) and that certain gender ideals can be shown in racial terms (i.e. gendered indiviudals of different races, in lieu of being that race, are expected to represent a certain type of masculinty or femininity).
Taylor wants us to keep distinct vocabularies for distinct purposes. He feels "race" to be a term important and useful enough to be hung onto. We, as humans, are many things at the same time: a race, gender, age, sexual orientation, and class (to name a few among a cornucopia of other things).
Questions:
Should the term "race" be used in certain circumstances and not others? When is it positive for someone to reveal information about their race, when is it negative, and when is it simply unnecessary? This question could be extended further to include ethnicity, class, caste, and/or gender. To rephrase, how much is too much in regard to use of these terms in society today, and how much is too little? Is there an equilibrium?
Biology discredits race
Taylor says that there are three basic problems in classical race-thinking that persuaded biology to take a non-racialist approach to studying human variation:
It seems to me that with the discovery of DNA, scientists would appreciate just how complicated inheritance can be. This assimilates pretty well into Taylor's quoting of John H. Relethford: "Until the 1950's much of biological anthropology was devoted to racial description and classification...followed later by an explanatory phase."
On the other hand, there are many companies these days that can take a saliva sample and tell you your constitutive races down to percentages. They recently published a genetic map of Europe. Its very interesting science and steers clear of the problematic clustering of skin color with other traits.
From an empirical standpoint, breaking DNA down into race seems a purely scientific pursuit that avoids the problems of race-thinking. However, I contend that it allows for a resurgence of classical race-thinking into biology, in its potential to link other genes (ie. gay genes, dumb genes) to the ones that "dictate" one's exact race. It seems even Nobel Prize winners can fall into this trap. This suggests that condition number two is still a problem to contend with in biology.
- Its typological basis: skin color appears as a continuum rather than in a discretized manner. The categories that might be formed from the discretization would only be arbitrary, unnatural ones.
- Illusory consistency: The "essential" traits that supposedly define each grouping often fail to appear as clusters that are reliable. The unreliable "essential" traits can extend as far as intelligence and behavior, clearly unscientific generalizations.
- Archaic conception of inheritance: Race-thinking in the biological sciences oversimplifies inheritance. It is immaturely descriptive rather than explanatory.
It seems to me that with the discovery of DNA, scientists would appreciate just how complicated inheritance can be. This assimilates pretty well into Taylor's quoting of John H. Relethford: "Until the 1950's much of biological anthropology was devoted to racial description and classification...followed later by an explanatory phase."
On the other hand, there are many companies these days that can take a saliva sample and tell you your constitutive races down to percentages. They recently published a genetic map of Europe. Its very interesting science and steers clear of the problematic clustering of skin color with other traits.
From an empirical standpoint, breaking DNA down into race seems a purely scientific pursuit that avoids the problems of race-thinking. However, I contend that it allows for a resurgence of classical race-thinking into biology, in its potential to link other genes (ie. gay genes, dumb genes) to the ones that "dictate" one's exact race. It seems even Nobel Prize winners can fall into this trap. This suggests that condition number two is still a problem to contend with in biology.
The Ethical Challenge
I had a few little problems with the way Paul Taylor dealt with the question: “Isn't race-thinking unethical?” Taylor wants to look at racialist thinking and (at least I thought) answer the question, whether this way of thinking is inherently racist.
He starts chapter out with a story that shows the controversy of the topic. (A Black person being called out on racialist thought and accused of racism) However, after giving a good working definition of racism, he then proceeds to only take a closer look at more uncontroversial 'classical racialist' thought. I think reading through the five claims he finds to be defining of 'classical racialism' (47-48) there cannot be two opinions on whether this framework is racist or not.
However, in the very first section of the chapter he describes all the tools needed to construct an argument that would make the case more interesting, but he does not make use of them. I will try to run through it quickly – I am not sure if I would qualify as racialist thinking or not.
As Taylor mentions there is an argument to be made that race-thinking “provides a basis for political mobilization and community building, or that it allows us to track the effects of racial discrimination.” (31) Building on this it could be argued that racialist thinking is responsible for racism, and in many forms is inherently racist, but that knowledge of this way of thinking is necessary in order to react adequately to injustice done in past or present.
Maybe I just missed the point of his question though, since I could not really find him giving a satisfying answer anywhere. (Maybe he answers it at some later point?)
He starts chapter out with a story that shows the controversy of the topic. (A Black person being called out on racialist thought and accused of racism) However, after giving a good working definition of racism, he then proceeds to only take a closer look at more uncontroversial 'classical racialist' thought. I think reading through the five claims he finds to be defining of 'classical racialism' (47-48) there cannot be two opinions on whether this framework is racist or not.
However, in the very first section of the chapter he describes all the tools needed to construct an argument that would make the case more interesting, but he does not make use of them. I will try to run through it quickly – I am not sure if I would qualify as racialist thinking or not.
As Taylor mentions there is an argument to be made that race-thinking “provides a basis for political mobilization and community building, or that it allows us to track the effects of racial discrimination.” (31) Building on this it could be argued that racialist thinking is responsible for racism, and in many forms is inherently racist, but that knowledge of this way of thinking is necessary in order to react adequately to injustice done in past or present.
Maybe I just missed the point of his question though, since I could not really find him giving a satisfying answer anywhere. (Maybe he answers it at some later point?)
Monday, October 20, 2008
What is the Target of Oppression, and thus What Does it Define?
In response to mostly Haslanger's first article but also the overall idea of both; I find a dilemma she attempts to work around but never meaningfully understands or solves. On pg. 41 of the 1st essay she says "...someone marked for subordination by reference to (assumed) male anatomy does not qualify as a woman, but also, in the particular context, is not socially positioned as a man." So oppression can give you a gender or a race, and also take it away? She seems to see blacks and women as uncontestedly clearcut terms (by definition), but for black men who are visibly oppressed (for being black) and at the same time advantaged (for being male), all she can say about them is that they're not men but not women; so considering a myriad of characteristics of any given individual, are they x% male and x% female depending on how advantaged:oppressed they are?
My point is this: rather than--the more ambiguous their oppressed/advantaged ratio, the less of an identity they have, why don't we conceive of oppression as versus traits or characteristics instead of people. I think it more plausible to say and the explain: not that people are oppressed and thus their identities are solely a product of their oppression, but rather their traits are oppressed and as bearers of those characteristics they suffer oppression.
My point is this: rather than--the more ambiguous their oppressed/advantaged ratio, the less of an identity they have, why don't we conceive of oppression as versus traits or characteristics instead of people. I think it more plausible to say and the explain: not that people are oppressed and thus their identities are solely a product of their oppression, but rather their traits are oppressed and as bearers of those characteristics they suffer oppression.
Taylor, Zerzan, and Language
Paul Taylor grounds his understanding and argument about "race" in the concept of language and how language contributes to "race-thinking." Taylor states of language that they "are an ambient feature of our social environments in part because they are also interpretive devices: they shape our experiences of the world" (5). Language is perhaps one of the most important devices in understanding the formulation and continued usage of race concepts and of other concepts that serve in the domination and domestication of both the earth and human beings. Taylor argues that race-thinking has been an essential part of human culture since the 1600s and that a philosophy of race necessarily involves studying the consequences of race-talk. John Zerzan, a prominent primitivist author, discusses the implications and roots of language in his essay "Too Marvelous for Words." In this essay Zerzan says that "the essence of language is the symbol." Language always requires the use of substitution of a word or concept for what presents itself directly to us. This substitution will always necessarily provide a paler, less-realistic version of what really is. Paul Taylor touches on this in his discussion of race and it's limited understanding based on sociohistorical and physical context. He speaks of the ways different words and concepts of race mean are associated with different human appearances in different areas. The substitution of the words black, white, or brown produce an unclear objective reality. The language of race and language in general cannot capture a human being but it can keep human beings captive to its logic. Language holds people in place based on the formulative histories of each word used to try to describe a person. Symbolic representations are only one way of seeing and connecting things in the world. If we try to look at each person as a whole rather than trying to partition them off into categories based on race/gender/class etc. a greater appreciation for one another may be achieved. As long as we use the limited confines of language to interact with each other oppression and domination will still be at the center of our interactions. In essence, for the same reason Zerzan critiques language, Taylor takes it up as the starting point for his discussion of race because language does so much to confine the wild and natural flow of life. It serves as a cage that holds all of our conceptions of reality, including race and other understandings of ourselves. To quote Zerzan quoting Michael Baxandall, "Any language...is a conspiracy against experience in the sense of being a collective attempt to arrange experience into managable parcels."
John Zerzan Essay at Insurgent Desire
John Zerzan Essay at Insurgent Desire
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Considering the origin of race thinking in the U.S.
Taylor’s analysis of race-thinking offers a noteworthy point concerning how “the idea of US racialism took shape under conditions established by the European colonial project” (19). If we consider that the epistemological framework from which race-thinking emerged came through the European lens, and upon the colonial project this framework was presented to be what is, through systems of education and social development, we might further understand not only how these categories purporting essential difference came to be so deeply engrained within public discourse, but also the political purpose they served for the colonialist. Walter Mignolo makes a similar point of the political measure taken in the development of race-thinking in his book, The Idea of Latin America, stating that “in order for one history to be seen as primary, a system of classification to marginalize certain knowledges, languages, and beings needs to be in place. Thus, colonization and the justification for the appropriation of land and the exploitation of labor in the process of the invention of America required the simultaneous ideological construction of racism” (15). If we are to take Mignolo's and Taylor’s claims concerning the emergence of race-thinking in the US, we might see a possible development of race-thinking as involving the following steps: (1) the setting of criteria concerning race, including that of a human hierarchy with Europe being the point of enunciation (2) the invitation of race-thinking through the colonial project of education (3) the reification of racial categories through application of the learned categories to people (whether this be to oneself or another).
Sunday, October 12, 2008
The Five Sexes: Scientific Categories?
For the most part I fell inline with the ethical arguments made in Fausto-Sterling’s article. When discussing (via McCullough) medical protocol for intrasex infants, she writes “The treatments mantra, in other words, should be therapy, not surgery”. I agree. She makes the case that parents should have access to the full range of information and options available to them. I agree. People should have the right to choose their gender, sex and whom they marry. I agree.
Since its no fun writing about how and why I agree with these points, I’ll instead nitpick her misrepresentation of science (bearing in mind that she is a professor of biology and I’m a mere philosophy undergrad).
In this article, Fausto-Sterling writes that biology divides human beings into two sexes or, as she puts it: “a perfectly dimorphic species”. This, of course, is not the case. Does she imagine that in writing “The Five Sexes” she would bring forth newly discovered phenotypes that science was previously oblivious to? Would an intrasex person be ignored by science? No. What does she mean then?
Biology is a science. Science is a method. Methods yield results. How we then interpret the results, categorize and divide based on them, has little to do with the method itself. Just to give her the benefit of the doubt, lets assume that science was a body of knowledge complete with categories and divisions for just about everything empirical. Should there be five sexes?
Open up any institutionalized science book and it will tell you that we have two sexes. If you dig deep enough, you will also find the varying forms of hermaphrodites, etc. It will likely have all the bases covered, albeit with the possibility of still working within the two-sex based system. In short, science is not ignoring anything.
Open up that same science book and you’ll find that humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes. If you dig deep enough you will find varying genetic cases (syndromes) that yield more or less than the normal 23 pairs (ex: down syndrome and the extra 21st chromosome). - this is something I am recently familiar with because my wife and I just had an obstetrics appointment last week- Is “science” wrong to say that humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes, granting that there are special cases when this is not true (and they are not ignored)?
My argument, that has admittedly taken on more than Fausto-Sterling was probably stating in the first place, is that categories based on science are practical. It is only the unfamiliar person that would read “two sexes” or “23 chromosomal pairs” to mean that there can ONLY be these and nothing else. If we wish to broaden the categories to always include all know special cases, then, in my opinion, we would need a better reason then the actual (rare) existence of these special cases. If we apply this logic elsewhere, we’d be left with a hodgepodge of scientific terminology filled with PC disclaimers and the word “unless” throughout science journals and textbooks. It just isn’t practical.
Analytic Form
Haslanger brought a very analytic side to this debate which I enjoyed after having a certain degree of difficulty getting a grip on Butler. Haslanger proceeded with straightforward logical arguments, that began with a setup of the question, proceeded by defining terms, brought up disputes with her point of view and provided rejoinders. Her conclusion was clearly laid out in the last few paragraphs of the paper. My question then, did this help or hinder the argument? Was she more or less persuasive then Butler because she spoke plainly and straightforwardly? Were her arguments laden with the Old mode of power because they were constructed in a manner that came to popularity under that structure? Can she hope to elliminate old categories while still using the old language that spawned those categories? In essense, which form of argument did you find more convincing, especially in dealing with the topic of gender liberation?
Friday, October 10, 2008
Universe pushing back?
So, I was talking to a human friend of mine about Butler and what we discussed in class today. We were discussing possible problems with idealism--believing that human beings are the only active agents in the universe, that the external world is inseparable from human consciousness. Karen Barad was brought into the conversation. She basically critiques Butler as being a way-too-extreme constructionist. The universe is always "pushing back"--there are so many other agents that help give rise to the reality we perceive. Seeing humans as the sole creators of everything we experience seems to give us too much credit. "Rampant Idealism" is the term she uses I think. Do you think Butler's ideas are too extreme in the realm of idealism? Do we really construct everything that we perceive? What does the rest of the universe have to do with this? If there is no foundation, what started all of this?
Butler and the 'Constructionist' Position
The constructionist view of race and gender comes in varying degrees and Butler's thoughts are certainly on the more 'radical' end of the spectrum. She is claiming that not only are race and gender socially constructed ideas but even sex and identity are unreal, socialized conceptions. I think this idea has its merits for several reasons. If people were able to let go of their need for a concrete, unchanging identity that consists of social categories and labels, I believe there would be less social and cultural hierarchies. I believe this to be true because if we don't slice up our societies into categories based on our identity labels then there would be no way to 'hierarchize' ourselves based on these so-called constructions. However, Butler's ideas also pose a challenge to the pragmatical way in which I see and experience the world and many other people as well. It is simply a matter of utility that we observe the world around us and apply labels and categories to the various things that we encounter. I acknowledge that these labels are not necessarily inherent in the objects or people that I apply them to, however the utility of these labels is helpful in having knowldge about the world. Butler's ideas, while intriguing, may be too extreme to be helpful in the sense that she is making the constructionist argument too expansive. In other words, where are we supposed to draw the line when it comes to ideas and labels that are socially constructed? Should we have to reform or eliminate all knowledge because all our labels and ideas are arbitrary? How do we know that we aren't being socialized to think that we are being socialized? I agree that we need to have the ability to critically analyze and possibly reform our ideas about the world; clearly our ideas of race and gender need to be worked on in order to end racism and sexism. However, I believe that we need more to work with then just the argument that these are social constructions, because if you follow Butler's argument to the end result pretty much all knowledge is socially constructed and it is clearly not useful to deny ourselves the right to believe in our knowledge of the world. Am I reading too much into Butler's thoughts? Should we question such 'basic' notions that we even have a concrete identity of our own? Where can we draw the line between knowledge and ideas that need to be reformed and our conceptions that are useful for our experience in the world?
Admin: Room Change
Note that we now have a new room more conducive to a seminar format. We're upstairs from the old room in Soc Sci II Room 171.
Thursday, October 9, 2008
... Points of Interest/ Questions on Butler's "Subversive Bodily Acts" chapter
Comments and Questions:
- Butler's language is puzzle-like, in my opinion, requiring the comprehensive piecing and close analysis of the various components that work together to paint the overall picture of her own beliefs about the subjects she is delving into. I am still trying to get a more firm grasp on being able to summarize and understand her outlooks fully... i am really enjoying her presentation of questions and exploration into subjects i have not been too exposed to.
- I enjoyed reading Butler's analysis of Kristeva's theory of the semiotic dimension of language and the "Symbolic". Her explaination of Kristeva's theory and her refutations of many of her ideas intrigued me...i was further exposed to the philosophical depths in which one can analyze Sex and sexuality.... i thought these philosophical ideas that were posed through language categorization (? right word?) by Kristeva act as an interesting and made for a graspable understanding of her overall points- she makes a solid apparatus of her own ideas... Butler refutes these ideas with a solid stance of her own... The dissection of the semiotic and the symbolic in reference to the paternal law and notions of motherhood and lesbianism and poetic language that Butler offers left me feeling confused while at the same time feeling i get the position that butler takes...
- I also liked reading about Butler's analysis of Foucault of Sexuality... and thought it was really interesting to be exposed to Foucault's "reverse-discourse which treats 'sex' as an effect rather than an origin" (119). My question's this- what are people's overall thoughts of Kristeva's theories. Foucault's as expressed in this particular chap 3, and comments on Butler's analysis of them.
- also i am curious how people understand Kristeva's theory overall... And if anyone has found an interesting and insightful way of explicating their idea of it?
- Butler's language is puzzle-like, in my opinion, requiring the comprehensive piecing and close analysis of the various components that work together to paint the overall picture of her own beliefs about the subjects she is delving into. I am still trying to get a more firm grasp on being able to summarize and understand her outlooks fully... i am really enjoying her presentation of questions and exploration into subjects i have not been too exposed to.
- I enjoyed reading Butler's analysis of Kristeva's theory of the semiotic dimension of language and the "Symbolic". Her explaination of Kristeva's theory and her refutations of many of her ideas intrigued me...i was further exposed to the philosophical depths in which one can analyze Sex and sexuality.... i thought these philosophical ideas that were posed through language categorization (? right word?) by Kristeva act as an interesting and made for a graspable understanding of her overall points- she makes a solid apparatus of her own ideas... Butler refutes these ideas with a solid stance of her own... The dissection of the semiotic and the symbolic in reference to the paternal law and notions of motherhood and lesbianism and poetic language that Butler offers left me feeling confused while at the same time feeling i get the position that butler takes...
- I also liked reading about Butler's analysis of Foucault of Sexuality... and thought it was really interesting to be exposed to Foucault's "reverse-discourse which treats 'sex' as an effect rather than an origin" (119). My question's this- what are people's overall thoughts of Kristeva's theories. Foucault's as expressed in this particular chap 3, and comments on Butler's analysis of them.
- also i am curious how people understand Kristeva's theory overall... And if anyone has found an interesting and insightful way of explicating their idea of it?
Monday, October 6, 2008
Butler- Subject of Feminism?
In reading Butler's Gender Trouble, I became extremely puzzled by what she is trying to say about subjects. On page four Butler writes, "Indeed, the question of women as the subject of feminism raises the possibility that there may not be a subject who stands 'before' the law, awaiting representation in or by the law." This quote seems very problematic to me. To me, this implies that the category of women has been too misrepresented to fit into our legal system; which still seems problematic. Did anyone else get confused by this, or did anyone else completely understand?
Butler's Genealogy of Gender
Summary:
As Butler proceeds through her prefaces and the opening chapter of Gender Trouble we are given an outline of gender performativity and the production of sex through gender. Butler’s performativity is based on the notion of repetition and ritual as a naturalizing practice within the juridical sphere as well as an anticipation of gender that produces a binary conception of gender and effectually, sex (xv). Working within this binary field of representation produces a compulsory heterosexuality where gender, sex, and sexuality seemingly imply one another as signifiers of one another, where sex is the result of gender rather than the premise. (9&10)
Critiquing the universal category of women that Western feminists have purported, Butler discusses ways in which the notion of woman is progressively normalized and solidified through certain feminist cries. While this is problematic in many ways, we can see how representation can be/is exclusionary to certain peoples:
“On the one hand, representation serves as the operative term within a political process that seeks to extend visibility and legitimacy to women as political subjects; on the other hand, representation is the normative function of a language which is said either to reveal or distort what is assumed to be true about the category of women.” (2)
Hence, the problem of the subject. While one gains subjectivity through the normative juridical notions of the body we begin to see how the limitations of gender include and exclude certain bodies. And while Butler only briefly discusses race and its intersections with gender, one can imagine the problematics that certain representations might bring about. Here Butler brings up the point of how it is problematic and potentially self-defeating to seek emancipation through normalizing structures of representation.
Butler goes on to intertwine/critique/differentiate between Monique Wittig’s and Luce Irigiray’s feminist analysis’ of gender. Although I am not familiar with either of the authors, Butler’s analysis makes clear the importance of language within a discussion of gender and the ways in which representation plays out for certain bodies because of linguistic and political limitations.
Questions:
*First off, do you actually buy any of what Butler is arguing?
*Butler points out the impossible task of refusing representational politics (7), given that we cannot abandon rep. politics what are some ways in which normative notions of gender can be subverted? Is drag one of them or is it just spectacle reinstituting gender binaries? Is the field of representation doomed to be exclusionary to some extent, and if so what does/should this say about the ways in which we understand subjectivity? (i.e. coherence of identity v. the fluidity of identity?)
*(This might be semi-off topic but not really...) How do we understand gay/lesbian representation 15 years after Butler’s Gender Trouble? Does this say anything to Butler’s idea around gender and compulsory heterosexuality? And is recent gay politics (i.e. gay marriage for instance) problematic in the sense of the supposed self-defeating effect of emancipation through discursive practices? Another way to put it might be is gay marriage normative? Or hetero? Or queer? Or subversive? And if this even makes sense, is it another form of some compulsory normative sexuality?
*Broadly put, what way does race fit into Butler’s genealogy of gender?
As Butler proceeds through her prefaces and the opening chapter of Gender Trouble we are given an outline of gender performativity and the production of sex through gender. Butler’s performativity is based on the notion of repetition and ritual as a naturalizing practice within the juridical sphere as well as an anticipation of gender that produces a binary conception of gender and effectually, sex (xv). Working within this binary field of representation produces a compulsory heterosexuality where gender, sex, and sexuality seemingly imply one another as signifiers of one another, where sex is the result of gender rather than the premise. (9&10)
Critiquing the universal category of women that Western feminists have purported, Butler discusses ways in which the notion of woman is progressively normalized and solidified through certain feminist cries. While this is problematic in many ways, we can see how representation can be/is exclusionary to certain peoples:
“On the one hand, representation serves as the operative term within a political process that seeks to extend visibility and legitimacy to women as political subjects; on the other hand, representation is the normative function of a language which is said either to reveal or distort what is assumed to be true about the category of women.” (2)
Hence, the problem of the subject. While one gains subjectivity through the normative juridical notions of the body we begin to see how the limitations of gender include and exclude certain bodies. And while Butler only briefly discusses race and its intersections with gender, one can imagine the problematics that certain representations might bring about. Here Butler brings up the point of how it is problematic and potentially self-defeating to seek emancipation through normalizing structures of representation.
Butler goes on to intertwine/critique/differentiate between Monique Wittig’s and Luce Irigiray’s feminist analysis’ of gender. Although I am not familiar with either of the authors, Butler’s analysis makes clear the importance of language within a discussion of gender and the ways in which representation plays out for certain bodies because of linguistic and political limitations.
Questions:
*First off, do you actually buy any of what Butler is arguing?
*Butler points out the impossible task of refusing representational politics (7), given that we cannot abandon rep. politics what are some ways in which normative notions of gender can be subverted? Is drag one of them or is it just spectacle reinstituting gender binaries? Is the field of representation doomed to be exclusionary to some extent, and if so what does/should this say about the ways in which we understand subjectivity? (i.e. coherence of identity v. the fluidity of identity?)
*(This might be semi-off topic but not really...) How do we understand gay/lesbian representation 15 years after Butler’s Gender Trouble? Does this say anything to Butler’s idea around gender and compulsory heterosexuality? And is recent gay politics (i.e. gay marriage for instance) problematic in the sense of the supposed self-defeating effect of emancipation through discursive practices? Another way to put it might be is gay marriage normative? Or hetero? Or queer? Or subversive? And if this even makes sense, is it another form of some compulsory normative sexuality?
*Broadly put, what way does race fit into Butler’s genealogy of gender?
Friday, October 3, 2008
Mixed-Race Twins
Here is a story on the intermix twin sisters mentioned in class today: http://www.intermix.org.uk/news/news_280206_02.asp. You might snoop around the site itself if it interests you but it may not. Also, my many thanks for all the good posts and links over the last few days everyone!
Fun Reading!!
Hey everyone so I found a couple intersting readings by Judith Butler that relate to this past week's discussions.
"Merely Cultural"
***http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:bQvnL9k95XIJ:www.brynmawr.edu/Acads/GSSW/schram/butlermerelycultural.pdf+judith+butler+merely+culture&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=6&gl=us
"The Uses of Equality"
***http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/diacritics/v027/27.1butler01.html
They are both fairly short. Given that no one contested to the earlier post this week siding with Fraser the first reading is pretty interesting. While Butler doesn't mention Rorty (and in fact in Rorty's essay he 'critiques' Butler's "merely cultural") she does provide a valid point contesting Fraser's "cultural recogntion" arguing for an analysis that includes the production of labour as inherently producing bodies (i.e. racialized, gendered, sexualized bodies) among other things.
The second one is also very interesting but not as directly related to Fraser and Rorty. It is an exchange between Ernesto Laclau and Butler on equality.
Cheers!
"Merely Cultural"
***http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:bQvnL9k95XIJ:www.brynmawr.edu/Acads/GSSW/schram/butlermerelycultural.pdf+judith+butler+merely+culture&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=6&gl=us
"The Uses of Equality"
***http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/diacritics/v027/27.1butler01.html
They are both fairly short. Given that no one contested to the earlier post this week siding with Fraser the first reading is pretty interesting. While Butler doesn't mention Rorty (and in fact in Rorty's essay he 'critiques' Butler's "merely cultural") she does provide a valid point contesting Fraser's "cultural recogntion" arguing for an analysis that includes the production of labour as inherently producing bodies (i.e. racialized, gendered, sexualized bodies) among other things.
The second one is also very interesting but not as directly related to Fraser and Rorty. It is an exchange between Ernesto Laclau and Butler on equality.
Cheers!
Thursday, October 2, 2008
"One is not born a woman, but rather becomes one" --Beauvoir
First of all you should visit
and next on the menu...
Ohhhh, geeez! Part One in “Gender Trouble” has already blown my mind…Only nine pages through the text and I’m already bouncing off the walls in my brain. It was like reading in some parallel universe where Foucault was a woman! (And look how problematic my discourse of gender has already become!) Wonderful!
Butler does not want to restrict the meaning of gender in any sense, which means that she also wants to avoid the idealization of certain expressions of gender. Rather, she thinks that opening up a new field of possibilities concerning gender should be our aim, while recognizing that our sexual hierarchy produces and consolidates gender as we know it.
In “Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire” Butler begins by positing a need to understand how the category of “women” is produced in our societal structures and how this production is the very thing which restrains it. She writes, “Juridical power inevitably produces what it claims merely to represent” (3). Immediately after reading this, my mind went directly to Foucault’s notion of the “deployment of sexuality.” Changing sex into a discourse through various power relations, such as the Catholic Church’s practice of confession, the attempted counter-conduct against a repressed sexual society by speaking verbosely of sex, etc., sex became an “imaginary element” which was produced by the discourse itself. From Foucault paper: (This imaginary element creates a desire in people: a desire to have sex, access sex, discover sex, liberate sex, articulate sex, and so on. This desirability makes us believe that we are affirming the rights of our sex against the power establishment which is believed to silence it, but all we are really doing to fastening ourselves even tighter to the deployment of sexuality.) This parallels all too well what Butler is saying about feminism.
Butler says that the formation of language and politics that represent “women” actually produce the subject “woman.” She is “discursively constituted by the very political system that is supposed to facilitate its emancipation” (3). On the next page, Butler posits that maybe there is no woman subject who stands before the law, awaiting representation by that institution. Is it possible to exist outside of our social and legal institutions?—outside the gendered boundaries produced by these dynamic systems of power?
Foundationalists, she says, assume a non-historical “before” where people were not yet governed and willfully chose to be a part of some social contract. This is the assumed state-of-nature hypothesis which Butler finds very problematic. That all the knowledge we have rests on some “justified” belief of a pre-law society just doesn’t seem to work. This view can be (loosely?) compared with the inevitability hypothesis and essentialism. (Am I right here? I had trouble fully understanding this part of Butler’s text…How else does this connect to her argument?)
“Woman/Women” as a common identity have become troublesome terms—there are multiple significations of the term, writes Butler. To be a “woman” is not all one is and gender is not always constituted coherently or consistently; it exists and intersects with other categories of being such as race, class, ethnicity, etc. The result of this singular identity claim is that it becomes impossible to separate “gender” from politics and culture—the same politics and culture which is actually at work producing the labels of “male/female” and “man/woman.”
Political assumption of a universal basis for feminism where “the oppression of women has some singular form discernable in the universal or hegemonic structure of patriarchy or masculine domination” becomes a way of reifying this oppression (5). Feminism tries to establish universal status for patriarchy in order to strengthen feminist claims. Butler says this is a shortcut to a “categorical or fictitious universality of the structure of dominion, held to produce women’s common subjugated experience” (5). This again saturated my brain with memories of Foucault’s general notion of power. Power, he claims, is not something that can be reified. “One needs to be nominalistic, no doubt: power is not an institution, and not a structure; neither is it a certain strength we are endowed with; it is the name that one attributes to a complex strategical situation in a particular society” (History of Sexuality, 93). Foucault claims that power itself always remains invisible; it does not arise independently of knowledge and vise versa. Power is not a substance and is not possessed by someone—it has its own intents. Power is an action over other actions; it is an exercise. Can we say something similar about the power relations concerning the oppression of “women” in a Butlerian framework?
The masculine/feminine binary constitutes an exclusive conceptual framework where opposites, dichotomies are created and recognized. The feminine is separated from constitution of race, class, gender, etc… In other words, this binary constitutes “woman” as exclusively “woman”—the opposite of man, separating the subject from other constitutions of identity. This is an inappropriate singular designation of identity. (Am I oversimplifying this? Not understanding is fully? I feel like I’m missing something…)
Our representational discourse concerning gender undermines feminism. (Again, back to Foucault’s “deployment of sexuality”—verbal discourse undermining the act and performance of sex as sex). Some may refuse to accept the category of “woman” as represented in these power relations. Butler says that “These domains of exclusion reveal the coercive and regulatory consequences of that construction, even when the construction has been elaborated for emancipatory purposes” (6). [Relate to Foucault’s notion of counter-conduct—I’ll leave a comment]. Feminism has its own representational claims. To suggest that it can seek wider representation is quite ironic since it is producing that which it is representing… This leads to misrepresentation because it is conforming to a requirement of representational politics. Butler says that our task should not be to refuse representational politics (since language and politics constitute contemporary fields of power), but rather to rethink the ontological constructions of identity.
Foucault
Hello all-- as I was reading Judy Butler, I thought that maybe a more clear understanding of Foucault might be helpful. I know some of you were in poststructuralism with David Hoy, a great class to begin deciphering Foucaultian lexicon. Anyways, I took a summer class with Andrew Delunas--"Philosophical Perspectives on Sexuality." I thought that maybe this short paper would be useful in understanding Foucault and Butler's notion of producing gender and performativity a bit more. I'm sure I've misinterpreted Foucault at some points in my paper, but maybe it will help make the general concepts a bit more clear.
Foucault, unlike Hegel, does not believe history can be classified in a linear or progressive way. Our world is not classified by Kantian categories of understanding; there is no fixed human nature. Foucault’s objective in these writings is to search for instances of discourse production; he wants to write a history on these discourses and their transformations.
In “The Incitement Discourse,” he begins by explaining the beginning of the 17th century as an era where frankness in sexual discourse became common. There was little need for secrecy concerning sexual practices. The codes were coarse and obscene compared to those of the nineteenth century. It was a period when “bodies made a display of themselves,” writes Foucault (18).
Sexuality became much more confined soon after. With capitalist expansion, the rise of new technology, absolute institutions, and regularization highly influenced and controlled populations. Before the era of disciplinary power and bio-power, sovereign power reigned. Death was made a spectacle; the sovereign maintained power through fear. He had the right to make die or let live. With capitalist expansion, the rise of new institutions took over and a new power developed. This power was now concerned with making live or letting die—power was maintained through the promise to keep citizens alive and well. Rather than making death a public spectacle, death became a secret—something hidden away and not spoken about. Death became the power limit—a private aspect of existence. With the development of disciplinary and bio-power, fostering life became the muscle behind these new forms of control. Guaranteeing the population safety from disease, war, etc., guaranteed life; power was now power amongst rather than power over.
With these new institutions, sex was also viewed in a different light. Regularization and normalization were key factors in controlling and repressing individual’s sex lives. Sexuality was confined to the bedroom and labeled as a practice of performing the serious function of reproduction. Sterility was tainted as terribly abnormal; it was driven out, denied, and reduced to silence since it was believed to have no right to existence. Silence was the characteristic feature of this repression—it was a sentence to disappear. The brothel and the mental hospital became the only places for tolerance, while everywhere else “modern Puritanism” rested its edict on nonexistence of sexuality through silence. Foucault wants to question this history. He says that we have been informed that repression has been the fundamental link between power, knowledge, and sexuality since the classic age and freeing ourselves from it comes at a cost. There must come a transgression of laws, a lifting of prohibitions, and an irruption of speech. He denounces Freud’s conformism; the normalizing functions of psychoanalysis do not hold the answers we seek.
The sexual cause is associated with the political cause, he argues. “If sex is repressed…condemned to prohibition, nonexistence, and silence, then the mere fact that one is speaking about it has the appearance of a deliberate transgression” (6). Foucault continues to write about how this is the only civilization who pays people to listen. We pay the psychoanalyst to listen to abnormal sexual secrets—it is evident that we place a market value on sex and the discourse of sex. What is important, argues Foucault, is not the economic factor, rather the existence of this sexual discourse. It is a “revelation of truth, the overturning of global laws, the proclamation of a new day to come…” (7). This discourse of sex arises only out of the repression that inspires silence.
Foucault continues discussing this discourse, bringing confession into the story. Sex itself is changed into a discourse by confessing one’s wrong doings and desires. In medieval confessions, one would tell the priest all the dirty details of their sins. Soon, discretion was advised with increasing emphasis, but the “confession of the flesh” continually increased (19). With people confessing their sins of the flesh, sex was transformed into a polymorphous set of discourses. It was shifted from the act itself to the stirrings of desire. Confession was an ideal for every good Christian and self-examination was a key factor—“discourse, therefore, had to trace the meeting line of the body and soul…under the authority of language” (20).
Foucault says that our society speaks verbosely about its own silence—it denounces the same powers it exercises. Foucault wants to know what sustains and supports these powers; he wants to know why we think we’re repressed; he wants to know why we burden ourselves so much today with so much guilt for once having made sex a sin. This blameworthy belief, he posits, may have disastrous consequences.
Foucault has doubts concerning the “repressive hypothesis”—he asks: “…is sexual repression truly an established historical fact?...Do the workings of power, and in particular those mechanisms that are brought into play in societies such as ours, really belong primarily to the category of repression?...[and] Did the critical discourse that addresses itself to repression come to act as a roadblock to a power mechanism that had operated unchallenged up to that point, or is it not in fact part of the same historical network as the thing it denounces by calling it repression?” (10). Foucault introduces these doubts in order to be contrary to that which he outlined previously. He wants to know why sexuality is so widely discussed, who the actors are in speaking of it, the links formed between these discourses, and what knowledge we form from these discourses.
In “Right of Death and Power Over Life” Foucault speaks of the discourse of sexuality as a discourse which falls outside counter-conduct. The deployment of sexuality creates an imaginary element which is sex (like the liberal sex paradigm)—this imaginary element creates a desire in people: a desire to have sex, access sex, discover sex, liberate sex, articulate sex, and so on. This desirability makes us believe that we are affirming the rights of our sex against the power establishment which is believed to silence it, but all we are really doing to fastening ourselves even tighter to the deployment of sexuality. He writes later, “The rallying point for the counterattack against the deployment of sexuality ought not to be a sex-desire, but bodies and pleasure” (157). Foucault thinks we need to stop talking about sex and have a discourse between bodies and pleasure.
Foucault, unlike Hegel, does not believe history can be classified in a linear or progressive way. Our world is not classified by Kantian categories of understanding; there is no fixed human nature. Foucault’s objective in these writings is to search for instances of discourse production; he wants to write a history on these discourses and their transformations.
In “The Incitement Discourse,” he begins by explaining the beginning of the 17th century as an era where frankness in sexual discourse became common. There was little need for secrecy concerning sexual practices. The codes were coarse and obscene compared to those of the nineteenth century. It was a period when “bodies made a display of themselves,” writes Foucault (18).
Sexuality became much more confined soon after. With capitalist expansion, the rise of new technology, absolute institutions, and regularization highly influenced and controlled populations. Before the era of disciplinary power and bio-power, sovereign power reigned. Death was made a spectacle; the sovereign maintained power through fear. He had the right to make die or let live. With capitalist expansion, the rise of new institutions took over and a new power developed. This power was now concerned with making live or letting die—power was maintained through the promise to keep citizens alive and well. Rather than making death a public spectacle, death became a secret—something hidden away and not spoken about. Death became the power limit—a private aspect of existence. With the development of disciplinary and bio-power, fostering life became the muscle behind these new forms of control. Guaranteeing the population safety from disease, war, etc., guaranteed life; power was now power amongst rather than power over.
With these new institutions, sex was also viewed in a different light. Regularization and normalization were key factors in controlling and repressing individual’s sex lives. Sexuality was confined to the bedroom and labeled as a practice of performing the serious function of reproduction. Sterility was tainted as terribly abnormal; it was driven out, denied, and reduced to silence since it was believed to have no right to existence. Silence was the characteristic feature of this repression—it was a sentence to disappear. The brothel and the mental hospital became the only places for tolerance, while everywhere else “modern Puritanism” rested its edict on nonexistence of sexuality through silence. Foucault wants to question this history. He says that we have been informed that repression has been the fundamental link between power, knowledge, and sexuality since the classic age and freeing ourselves from it comes at a cost. There must come a transgression of laws, a lifting of prohibitions, and an irruption of speech. He denounces Freud’s conformism; the normalizing functions of psychoanalysis do not hold the answers we seek.
The sexual cause is associated with the political cause, he argues. “If sex is repressed…condemned to prohibition, nonexistence, and silence, then the mere fact that one is speaking about it has the appearance of a deliberate transgression” (6). Foucault continues to write about how this is the only civilization who pays people to listen. We pay the psychoanalyst to listen to abnormal sexual secrets—it is evident that we place a market value on sex and the discourse of sex. What is important, argues Foucault, is not the economic factor, rather the existence of this sexual discourse. It is a “revelation of truth, the overturning of global laws, the proclamation of a new day to come…” (7). This discourse of sex arises only out of the repression that inspires silence.
Foucault continues discussing this discourse, bringing confession into the story. Sex itself is changed into a discourse by confessing one’s wrong doings and desires. In medieval confessions, one would tell the priest all the dirty details of their sins. Soon, discretion was advised with increasing emphasis, but the “confession of the flesh” continually increased (19). With people confessing their sins of the flesh, sex was transformed into a polymorphous set of discourses. It was shifted from the act itself to the stirrings of desire. Confession was an ideal for every good Christian and self-examination was a key factor—“discourse, therefore, had to trace the meeting line of the body and soul…under the authority of language” (20).
Foucault says that our society speaks verbosely about its own silence—it denounces the same powers it exercises. Foucault wants to know what sustains and supports these powers; he wants to know why we think we’re repressed; he wants to know why we burden ourselves so much today with so much guilt for once having made sex a sin. This blameworthy belief, he posits, may have disastrous consequences.
Foucault has doubts concerning the “repressive hypothesis”—he asks: “…is sexual repression truly an established historical fact?...Do the workings of power, and in particular those mechanisms that are brought into play in societies such as ours, really belong primarily to the category of repression?...[and] Did the critical discourse that addresses itself to repression come to act as a roadblock to a power mechanism that had operated unchallenged up to that point, or is it not in fact part of the same historical network as the thing it denounces by calling it repression?” (10). Foucault introduces these doubts in order to be contrary to that which he outlined previously. He wants to know why sexuality is so widely discussed, who the actors are in speaking of it, the links formed between these discourses, and what knowledge we form from these discourses.
In “Right of Death and Power Over Life” Foucault speaks of the discourse of sexuality as a discourse which falls outside counter-conduct. The deployment of sexuality creates an imaginary element which is sex (like the liberal sex paradigm)—this imaginary element creates a desire in people: a desire to have sex, access sex, discover sex, liberate sex, articulate sex, and so on. This desirability makes us believe that we are affirming the rights of our sex against the power establishment which is believed to silence it, but all we are really doing to fastening ourselves even tighter to the deployment of sexuality. He writes later, “The rallying point for the counterattack against the deployment of sexuality ought not to be a sex-desire, but bodies and pleasure” (157). Foucault thinks we need to stop talking about sex and have a discourse between bodies and pleasure.
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