http://phil538.pbwiki.com/ RecentChanges for phil538 http://phil538.pbwiki.com/feedlogo.gif http://pbwiki.com/ PBwiki 1.3.8 support@pbwiki.com http://phil538.pbwiki.com/Second+Read%2C+McWhorter email.hidden@example.com (hagit barkai) hagit barkai edited Second Read, McWhorter Ladelle McWhorter Bodies and Pleasures
In the project of creating an oppositional resistance to sexual regimes of power, Ladelle McWhorter looks for freedom-affirming practices that are based on bodies and pleasure. This is based on Foucault advice for resistance through turning from sexual desire to bodies and pleasure for affirming one’s identity.
only sees cease to oppose productivity, but is inherently creative and productive (177).
The project is to use pleasure as a primary disciplinary tool, therefore establishing identities and selfhood on pleasures rather than pains (182). Liberation is attempted not through freedom of desire but through being made more susceptible to pleasure (184).
The process of turning to pleasure in order to open up new possibilities becomes an “aesthetic of existence” (189). The creative power of pleasure is turned towards the individual who is transformed through it, turning life itself into a work of art (188). In other words, the indi]]> Tue, 04 Dec 2007 15:14:35 +0000 mod http://phil538.pbwiki.com/Second+Read%2C+McWhorter email.hidden@example.com (Nathalie Nya) Nathalie Nya edited Second Read, McWhorter But the recent struggles over ENDA in Congress illustrate some of the limitations of this kind of strategy. The most prominent national gay rights group sold out its transgender members on the inclusion of gender identity in the legislation just to make sure that some version of a bill prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation would pass. This was clearly a strategic decision, but it seems to me that the cost is that it undermines a larger sense of queer community (if, in fact, such a thing exists, which we might also want to talk about). At the very least, it seems to privilege some queer identities over others, which would seem to be an unpleasant consequence someone like McWhorter. The formal legal protection may have passed, but when challenging the prevailing ideology about gender got difficult, the solution was to give up.
So I wonder what the rest of you are thinking about McWhorter’s distinction between queer communities and political action groups. Also, is it possible to arg]]> Mon, 03 Dec 2007 14:13:36 +0000 mod http://phil538.pbwiki.com/Second+Read%2C+McWhorter email.hidden@example.com (lisa) lisa edited Second Read, McWhorter I find counter-remembering—and the example developed in the discussion of Herculine Barbin—to be useful ways of challenging the dominant discourse. Rather than just subverting dominant paradigms, counter-memory can propel us beyond mere resistance and toward counterattack, which has the potential to create something new and show us new ways to live (206). For McWhorter, as for Foucault, counter-memory is an ethical—and not a scientific—practice. Whereas better social constructivism can get us to better empirical knowledge, counter-memory does not adhere to any absolute, final truth.
I am aware, though, that the distinction between constructivism and counter-memory may appear hollow to some. Like McWhorter, I find the abandonment of foundations a bit frightening because I want to do better constructivist empiricism; I want to blow the positivists out of the water with conclusions that rest on stronger epistemological foundations. At the same time, I’m drawn to these practices of counter-memory in ]]> Mon, 03 Dec 2007 13:46:20 +0000 mod http://phil538.pbwiki.com/Second+Read%2C+McWhorter email.hidden@example.com (Hillary) Hillary edited Second Read, McWhorter In her book, McWhorter draws a distinction between social constructivism and the practice of Foucauldian counter-memory.She cites the work of Jonathan Ned Katz as an important constructivist contribution to the study of sexuality.Katz’s book, The Invention of Heterosexuality, “rests on the conviction that the power of heterosexuality comes from its unchallenged claim to be natural—meaning ahistorical, not produced in history—from its claim that it exists prior to and independently of any social institutions” (36).As such, Katz’s work provides an empirical account of the social construction of heterosexual identity; in his account, a sound argument and rigorous use of data facilitate “a conclusion [that] is asserted with assurance” (40).That is, Katz “knows what he is talking about, and his article and book are intended to help the reader come to know likewise” (40).
Foucauldian genealogy, however, does not rest on absolute epistemological foundations.Genealogy, McWhorter explains, ]]> Mon, 03 Dec 2007 13:38:44 +0000 mod http://phil538.pbwiki.com/Second+Read%2C+McWhorter email.hidden@example.com (Kristin Rawls) Kristin Rawls edited Second Read, McWhorter Foucauldian genealogy, however, does not rest on absolute epistemological foundations. Genealogy, McWhorter explains, “never rests content with any stable identity” (41). Here, McWhorter seems to suggest that Katz’s work merely “destabilizes hegemonic discourses” and “[describes] a view or a set of events different from the one the dominant discourse describes” (42). The major distinction, then, is that genealogy “[redescribes] the same set of events that the dominant discourse describes and, more importantly, in a way that undercuts the dominant description of them” (42). This work is successful, McWhorter says, when “it does a better job of describing those events in accordance with the justificatory standards the dominant discourse employs or [when] it demonstrates that the dominant discourse somehow violates its own standards in its descriptions” (42).
This characterization of genealogy seems closely linked to projects of counter-memory, through which it is possible to “make our]]> Mon, 03 Dec 2007 13:15:31 +0000 mod http://phil538.pbwiki.com/Second+Read%2C+McWhorter email.hidden@example.com (Kristin Rawls) Kristin Rawls edited Second Read, McWhorter In her book, McWhorter draws a distinction between social constructivism and the practice of Foucauldian counter-memory.She cites the work of Jonathan Ned Katz as an important constructivist contribution to the study of sexuality.Katz’s book, The Invention of Heterosexuality, “rests on the conviction that the power of heterosexuality comes from its unchallenged claim to be natural—meaning ahistorical, not produced in history—from its claim that it exists prior to and independently of any social institutions” (36).As such, Katz’s work provides an empirical account of the social construction of heterosexual identity; in his account, a sound argument and rigorous use of data facilitate “a conclusion [that] is asserted with assurance” (40).That is, Katz “knows what he is talking about, and his article and book are intended to help the reader come to know likewise” (40).
Foucauldian genealogy, however, does not rest on absolute epistemological foundations.Genealogy, McWhorter explains, ]]> Mon, 03 Dec 2007 13:14:27 +0000 mod http://phil538.pbwiki.com/Second+Read%2C+McWhorter email.hidden@example.com (Evan) Evan edited Second Read, McWhorter Do bodies and pleasure allow a creation of an identity through a shaping the self and its life, or do bodies and pleasure form a surface on which a denial of identity is possible? Can McWhorter’s celebration of self creation through pleasure answer for her original need to resist sexual desire identity?
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Critical Social Pleasures
Evan Seehausen
In what ways does McWhorter’s examination of Foucault’s theories allow us to better understand what we do as theorists? One of my primary concerns is the way in which we can continue to allow for the development of counter-memories while attempting to create spaces for counterattack. I’m reminded of many of the criticisms of Foucaultian (and postmodern in general) theory that claim that it stymies political change by complicating matters to such an extent that action is no longer possible. Clearly McWhorter argues agai]]> Mon, 03 Dec 2007 12:19:12 +0000 mod http://phil538.pbwiki.com/Second+Read%2C+McWhorter email.hidden@example.com (Hagit Barkai) Hagit Barkai edited Second Read, McWhorter What I find myself wondering is if this provides a way to tease apart a group that shares common experiences (pleasures, for instance) and one that shares common desires. This seems to be where we were stuck in trying to understand Young’s city life suggestions. If, for instance, we form the LGBTQ community based on a shared experience (e.g. coming out to one’s family and friends) instead of on a shared desire (e.g. for same-sex sexual partners), we get a different group. If we turn this to Young’s politics, if a group forms more based on what they have shared than on what they seek, do we lose the ability to incorporate Anderson’s yearning?
This resonated for me personally a lot, and I think it may provide us a way to bring together (ecologically!) a majority of the texts to find a way for them to function in our individual politics and work.
Second reading. Hagit Barkai.
Ladelle McWhorter Bodies and Pleasures
In the project of creating an oppositional resistance to sexual regimes of]]> Mon, 03 Dec 2007 11:00:06 +0000 mod http://phil538.pbwiki.com/Second+Read%2C+McWhorter email.hidden@example.com (Hillary) Hillary edited Second Read, McWhorter I can concede that point for now (if it is, in fact anyone’s point... maybe its just a straw woman). But Marxist (Rosemary Hennessy, for example) and postmodern/post-structuralist leaning feminists (Linda Nicholson, for example) have both argued that we can analyze and name social totalities without creating totalizing theories. I am not sure what that would look like, but Hennessy argues that our identities are constructed, in part, to simultaneously obscure and explain the inequalities created by capitalism. Nevertheless, she concedes that identities can be places from which politics can be effective, as long as such a politics has some analysis of political economy and its role in creating the identity upon which the politics is based. Without such a connective tissue between discourses that yield oppression, it strike me (and Hennessy) as though we’re playing a losing game of whack-a-mole, in which another mole rears its ugly head in an alternative discursive practice to explain inequality each time w]]> Sun, 02 Dec 2007 00:09:15 +0000 mod http://phil538.pbwiki.com/Second+Read%2C+McWhorter email.hidden@example.com (kate) kate edited Second Read, McWhorter McWhorter, Round Two
Kate Driscoll Derickson
Discursive whack-a-mole
The margins of my copy of Bodies and Pleasures read like a two year old’s endless litany of questions: “Why? Why? Why? Why?” (apologies in advance if the analysis is also as obtuse and annoying as two year olds can be at times...). McWhorter does an excellent job of tracing how different identities are created through normative practices and constructed through discourses. Her nuanced reading of Foucault’s genealogical practices (almost) resuscitates him from the abyss of relativism to which he is often relegated. And yet with Foucault, and McWhorter, I am often left wondering: why does power need to function in this way? Why, in the now infamous case of her cousin’s disagreement with the bank, do some discourses appear more legitimate to Harry McNash than others?
]]> Sat, 01 Dec 2007 15:38:00 +0000 mod http://phil538.pbwiki.com/Second+Read%2C+McWhorter email.hidden@example.com (kate) kate edited Second Read, McWhorter]]> Sat, 01 Dec 2007 15:37:19 +0000 mod http://phil538.pbwiki.com/Second+Read%2C+McWhorter email.hidden@example.com (kate) kate edited Second Read, McWhorter McWhorter, Round Two
Discursive whack-a-mole
The margins of my copy of Bodies and Pleasures read like a two year old’s endless litany of questions: “Why? Why? Why? Why?” (apologies in advance if the analysis is also as obtuse and annoying as two year olds can be at times...). McWhorter does an excellent job of tracing how different identities are created through normative practices and constructed through discourses. Her nuanced reading of Foucault’s genealogical practices (almost) resuscitates him from the abyss of relativism to which he is often relegated. And yet with Foucault, and McWhorter, I am often left wondering: why does power need to function in this way? Why, in the now infamous case of her cousin’s disagreement with the bank, do some discourses appear more legitimate to Harry McNash than others?
I understand and appreciate the intense therapeutic and political value in the de-naturalizing of oppressive discourses through the practice of genealogy. I think it’s a crucial ]]> Sat, 01 Dec 2007 15:37:00 +0000 mod http://phil538.pbwiki.com/Second+Read%2C+Alcoff email.hidden@example.com (lisa) lisa edited Second Read, Alcoff More specifically, what is imagined about race and gender categories is how we come to make judgment about these categories on the bodies of others. To attain “knowledge in most cases we must engage in a process of reasoning, and to engage in most kinds of reasoning—practical reasoning, moral reasoning—we must engage in a process of judgment (2006: 94).” Thus what is imagined about race and gender categories is how we give reason to these categories. This implies then that real race and gender categories are always already imagined. Given the way race and gender categories are conceived, they show how reason is an embodies concept. Our conceptual “system includes our fundamental metaphysical categories, the ways in which we experience and articulate our inner lives, even our understanding of morality, all of which are ‘crucially shaped by our bodies’ (2006: 104).”
Alcoff’s critique of Johnson then is that, “Johnson has [not] ventured to hypothesize the effects of different cultural, rac]]> Mon, 26 Nov 2007 13:43:30 +0000 mod http://phil538.pbwiki.com/Second+Read%2C+Alcoff email.hidden@example.com (Kristin Rawls) Kristin Rawls edited Second Read, Alcoff Kristin Rawls
In her book, Linda Alcoff offers what seem to be disparate justifications for identity politics in combating both sexism and racism. In her treatment of sexism, Alcoff is extremely suspicious of poststructuralist approaches that question the viability “women” as a unitary category of analysis. In order to accomplish this task, she defends “a concept of identity as positionality” which she suggests can “give a content to women’s identity without solidifying that content for all time” and essentializing women in an oppressive way (151). She justifies this approach by suggesting that it is important to “do better than say, ‘I will make demands in the name of women even though I don’t accept the category of ‘women’” (152). She is explicitly critical of the attempts of Butler and other poststructuralists to disrupt gender categories and suggests that such critiques are indicative of a modern desire to attain mastery over nature (161).
be united underst]]> Mon, 26 Nov 2007 13:23:55 +0000 mod http://phil538.pbwiki.com/Second+Read%2C+Alcoff email.hidden@example.com (Nathalie Nya) Nathalie Nya edited Second Read, Alcoff]]> Mon, 26 Nov 2007 13:19:50 +0000 mod http://phil538.pbwiki.com/Second+Read%2C+Alcoff email.hidden@example.com (Nathalie Nya) Nathalie Nya edited Second Read, Alcoff I agree with Alcoff that we should not attempt to eliminate identity altogether as some of the critics of identity claim. I think that it’s possible to see identities as very real and very much determined by material conditions without trying to locate material conditions that are independent of discourse. I just don’t understand the distinction that she’s drawing between discourse and nature, even though I appreciate her exposition on post-positivistic understandings of the two. Many of the other thinkers who we have read have drawn on such distinctions as well, and I’d like to work through how that distinction works in Alcoff’s particular account. I’m particularly interested in her distinction between objective and nonobjective types. What does it mean that “the basis for some categories are independent of human beings”, if all of the entities involved are “linguistically conceptualized” (168)? In the case of carbon based things, isn’t the very causal framework upon which such a descri]]> Mon, 26 Nov 2007 13:18:40 +0000 mod http://phil538.pbwiki.com/Second+Read%2C+Alcoff email.hidden@example.com (Evan) Evan edited Second Read, Alcoff In order to avoid what she views as the pitfalls of extreme relativism, Alcoff suggests that it is important to resist the view that race “is ultimately without anymore explanatory power or epistemological relevance than on the liberal view” (181). Rather than looking for natural explanations for racial difference, however, Alcoff argues that racism has often been naturalized and defended on the basis of visual markers. That is, she explains, “race works through the domain of the visible” such that “the experience of race is first and foremost on the perception of race” (187). The major point that I want to communicate here is that Alcoff is able to explain a basis for group solidarity that is quite powerful—and real—but which has no basis in the natural. Far from leading to nihilism and melancholia, Alcoff suggests that social construction is integral to an understanding of the current deployment of racism in the United States. Ultimately, Alcoff’s treatment of racial identities suggests th]]> Mon, 26 Nov 2007 12:46:35 +0000 mod http://phil538.pbwiki.com/Second+Read%2C+Alcoff email.hidden@example.com (Kristin Rawls) Kristin Rawls edited Second Read, Alcoff What is then the account that could be given to the oppressed position of being invisible, invisibility of the oppressed individual’s gaze, and unheard individual voice? Looking at the way Alcoff uses ‘voice’ and ‘gaze’, I searched for individual expression that functions as a kind of “positive visibility” or of ‘being-noticeable’. But the voice is not the voice of the individual but of a group identity as Latina voice or (119) or voice of U.S. workers (46). The individual, or what Alcoff calls ‘the subjective account’, is given not a full voice but ‘a tone of voice’ (184). The gaze as well in a gaze of a group identity such as the generalized male gaze (279), the gaze of black people (35) or the objectifying gaze from a detached agency (111).
As a basis for building an account of the political role of the visual, I see this as lacking in creating a one sided view of the visual, which constructs the visible as dangerous and the invisible as safe. I think it does not address what i]]> Mon, 26 Nov 2007 12:17:50 +0000 mod http://phil538.pbwiki.com/Second+Read%2C+Alcoff email.hidden@example.com (Hagit Barkai) Hagit Barkai edited Second Read, Alcoff I find this a sophisticated argument for retaining the ability to make claims about women and their shared (if partial) position. Coming from a community development background, I find it essential to be able to make claims about the socio-economic status of women, not only to argue for alternative approaches to addressing their needs, but to argue for epistemological alternatives for knowing about their lives that stem, in part, from their experiences. And like Alcoff, I want to do better than simply pretend that there is a category of women that I don’t really believe exists, but will use for political purposes. Further, in the settings I am accustomed to working – poor, urban settings – the relationship to childbirth and care as a causally significant, if socially constructed, grounds for an objective category of women rings particularly true. It seems Alcoff is arguing that this ground is applicable beyond certain types of situations, but is stopping short of a global universal. Is that the case? Wh]]> Mon, 26 Nov 2007 12:11:33 +0000 mod http://phil538.pbwiki.com/Second+Read%2C+Alcoff email.hidden@example.com (kate) kate edited Second Read, Alcoff However, this guilt can be tainted, of course, and turn into a sense of persecution, resulting in claims of reverse racism and victimage. White supremacy espouses pride but with that rides insecurity. Alcoff acknowledges the class dynamic attendant upon most white supremacy organizations. This danger seems inherent in advocating greater pride for groups with privilege, though. Pride can turn very ugly when it is wielded by a group that historically has held positions of power and has greater access to material and cultural capital.
Alcoff advocates group identity, and this seems problematic for groups with historical privileges. I appreciate that she indicates these identities are formed through iterative enactments and awareness of their banality is crucial. She also seems to be seeking to avoid essentialized identities. If we embrace increased pride in whiteness, however, how do we avoid or guard against having people wallowing in guilt, becoming militaristic supremacists, or essentializing those identit]]> Mon, 26 Nov 2007 09:12:55 +0000 mod