k-punk
Spectres of Mark
A number of times recently, both on the web and in meatworld, I have seen males - and it is always males - aver something to the effect that intellectual discussion or rationality are masculine.
Rationality just means consistency: in the first instance, intellectual consistency, but more broadly consistency across all aspects of your life - ultimately this means a consistency <i>between</i> how you live and how you think, in other words ethical consistency.
That is why Spinoza and Marx are rationalists in the true sense: because they demand that your conduct be determined by reason and reason alone. So no-one can claim to be a Marxist or a Spinozist if they abuse children or beat women. (This doesn't go for EITHER Heidegerrian Contintentalism OR Analytic Philosophy; it's perfectly possible to be a good Heideggerian or an Analytic Philosopher and be a rabid Nazi precisely because, for diametrically opposing reasons, philosophy is held to be cut off from ('above') ordinary ('mere') ethics in both cases).
But the same is obviously true about feminism. Feminism is a rational critique of structural injustice. The force of the phrase 'the personal is the political' was of course to insist that there was no escape from consistency: politics had to go all the way down. (Now this phrase has an opposite meaning: the obsessive personalization of everything, the Cult Studs creed that the masses are resisting through watching TV etc, has contributed to the almost total evacuation of politics from public life.)
Importantly, feminism, Marxism and Spinozism are about resisting the lure of 'experience'. Traditionally, the working class experienced itself as inferior to its supposed masters; just as women experienced themselves as fit only for domestic labour. Collective consciousness raising allowed them to decode this experience, to use reason to escape the matrix-prison of individuated oed-I-pod emiseration.
Males have not always experienced themselves as inferior. And sometimes a certain type of male - by no means a lad, but in its own way, equally as typical of the sex - becomes very invested in a certain type of so-called intense experience. Now the cult of experience - even of these 'intense' experiences - is one of the most dangerous and reactionary positions to hold today. It is the new orthodoxy, which Zizek rightly calls the ideology of late capitalism. Sometimes, as Zizek notes, this phenomenological cult of 'cosmic engagement' calls itself Spinozism. But this phenomenologizing of Spinoza, this reduction of Spinoza to being a feelgood manual for drugged out hippies, is utterly disastrous, precisely because it removes politics. The thought is that, in principle, ANYONE could get out of their heads and become intense, so hey, why be concerned about injustice or the state of the world? So getting out of your head just IS political. No need to engage in antagonism, coz that's heavy man, and it messes with the vibe. Let people lie, cheat, steal, abuse each other, coz like, hey, what can you do about it? And those people being lied to, cheated, stolen from and abused - they could get out of their heads too, so what's the problem?
Why is there a male 'artist' on every block but precious few male nurses? Or conversely: why are there so few successful female novelists, artists or philosophers? Is it because women can't think or write? Because they don't have the inclination?
No, it's because they have tended to have other priorities - often involving caring for the wayward male 'artist'.
The intellect is not the preserve of the male. You only have to listen to most men talking to know that, surely. Saying that it rationality is masculine is straightforward, no-nonsense sexism. What of intellectual women? Are they monsters, failing in their supposed biological destiny to be irrational, compliant, non-antagonistic artists' muses?
Rationality is not male, it's not even human, it's not even limited to this material universe. It is a way of escaping what you are, what you have been, a way out of carnal heaviness into the lightness of the excarnate.
Rationality just means consistency: in the first instance, intellectual consistency, but more broadly consistency across all aspects of your life - ultimately this means a consistency <i>between</i> how you live and how you think, in other words ethical consistency.
That is why Spinoza and Marx are rationalists in the true sense: because they demand that your conduct be determined by reason and reason alone. So no-one can claim to be a Marxist or a Spinozist if they abuse children or beat women. (This doesn't go for EITHER Heidegerrian Contintentalism OR Analytic Philosophy; it's perfectly possible to be a good Heideggerian or an Analytic Philosopher and be a rabid Nazi precisely because, for diametrically opposing reasons, philosophy is held to be cut off from ('above') ordinary ('mere') ethics in both cases).
But the same is obviously true about feminism. Feminism is a rational critique of structural injustice. The force of the phrase 'the personal is the political' was of course to insist that there was no escape from consistency: politics had to go all the way down. (Now this phrase has an opposite meaning: the obsessive personalization of everything, the Cult Studs creed that the masses are resisting through watching TV etc, has contributed to the almost total evacuation of politics from public life.)
Importantly, feminism, Marxism and Spinozism are about resisting the lure of 'experience'. Traditionally, the working class experienced itself as inferior to its supposed masters; just as women experienced themselves as fit only for domestic labour. Collective consciousness raising allowed them to decode this experience, to use reason to escape the matrix-prison of individuated oed-I-pod emiseration.
Males have not always experienced themselves as inferior. And sometimes a certain type of male - by no means a lad, but in its own way, equally as typical of the sex - becomes very invested in a certain type of so-called intense experience. Now the cult of experience - even of these 'intense' experiences - is one of the most dangerous and reactionary positions to hold today. It is the new orthodoxy, which Zizek rightly calls the ideology of late capitalism. Sometimes, as Zizek notes, this phenomenological cult of 'cosmic engagement' calls itself Spinozism. But this phenomenologizing of Spinoza, this reduction of Spinoza to being a feelgood manual for drugged out hippies, is utterly disastrous, precisely because it removes politics. The thought is that, in principle, ANYONE could get out of their heads and become intense, so hey, why be concerned about injustice or the state of the world? So getting out of your head just IS political. No need to engage in antagonism, coz that's heavy man, and it messes with the vibe. Let people lie, cheat, steal, abuse each other, coz like, hey, what can you do about it? And those people being lied to, cheated, stolen from and abused - they could get out of their heads too, so what's the problem?
Why is there a male 'artist' on every block but precious few male nurses? Or conversely: why are there so few successful female novelists, artists or philosophers? Is it because women can't think or write? Because they don't have the inclination?
No, it's because they have tended to have other priorities - often involving caring for the wayward male 'artist'.
The intellect is not the preserve of the male. You only have to listen to most men talking to know that, surely. Saying that it rationality is masculine is straightforward, no-nonsense sexism. What of intellectual women? Are they monsters, failing in their supposed biological destiny to be irrational, compliant, non-antagonistic artists' muses?
Rationality is not male, it's not even human, it's not even limited to this material universe. It is a way of escaping what you are, what you have been, a way out of carnal heaviness into the lightness of the excarnate.