Race as an artifact of the racist's mind

sherief

Generic Human
Padraig, nice follow up, I'm glad this thread has been revived. Your first point, regarding the structuring principle, is a good one. I follow Badiou again here and call these various things, which in the poor state of politics today simply become 'identities', the inexistant. When Marx designated the 'proletariat', he was naming a site of politics, and specifically that site where there was existence (presentation) excluded from existence (the re-presentational structure of the historical situation). Class is thus the primary inexistent of capitalist, bourgeois society, and remains so to this day. A funny thing, recently repeated to me by an uncle of mine, is how race is so quickly forgotten (in US society) the higher up on the class ladder one goes. The lower one goes, the more race becomes an issue, as your cartoons and post illustrate regarding blacks and irish competing for the same industrial jobs. Now, I don't so much think that there's an active malice which bends the 'lower' classes to struggle with one another along identitarian lines, but it's clear how the state or situation would preference these categories over class to provoke these sort of intercenine struggles, furthering the solidarity and security of the bourgeois. The inexistent then is always in a way class, that which has no share despite the fact of its existence; this is how I see the connection you describe between class and the women's movement, civil rights, etc. All these things are overcoded by the system to maintain their inexistence, and thus they become the site of possible emancipatory politics.

Perry Anderson has a bit in In the Tracks of Historical Materialism where he's attempting to link Marxism to other progressive/radical movements. He says that just as much as socialism can't happen without the emancipation of women, the emancipation of women cannot truly occur without socialism. I find this to be an appealing and insightful statement. Race, gender, ethnicity or other identities only go as far as to show us these inexistents, to begin to let us approximate where a site of politics may be; however, for such politics to truly succeed in their goals they must force social change at the level of the universal (in political and economic applications).

Don't get me wrong about the genetics bit, I might not have made myself as clear as I wanted to be. I think that this new eugenics is largely arbitrary at best and quite possibly incredibly dangerous. It's biopolitics at its height, and the atmosphere surrounding it seems ghastly, however, and this is a question for another thread, how do we kill this biopolitical paradigm without killing the possibility of doing medicine, etc.? Can we throw the bathwater out and keep the baby? Vice-versa?
 
sherief said:
I'd love to see a world without race, but we can't simply speak it away

then just see it and maybe one day everyone will. We spoke it into existence, we can speak it away

isn't that what Uncle Bob meant about "chant down babylon" and chasing crazy ballheads... rastaman vibration ???

it was King that said "I have a dream"...

...or maybe it is the darkness of the neverending story

I don't think so... *ever the optimist*

...I always wondered what happened to the socialist, anti establishment intelligentsia ???

they became bloggers, forumsluts and postwhores...no offense

... from what i can understand instituting universal socialism is exactly like forcing a global monoculture on the masses and doesn't account for the fact that humans by their very nature aren't globally minded or monocultural or even altruistic. Didn't we learn anything from the soviet collapse ???

we're essentially community minded, tribal and multicultural but now thanks to the net we're not geographically fixed, we're cybertribes, communities of interest yet retaining the vestiges of individual culture according to our environment and ethnicity...

thats what makes the net so dangerous and why the powers that be would love to clog it up, cos it can and methinks will be a state without borders or centralised system of control

cultural evolution dicates only the strong will adapt and survive and methinks white patriarchal capitalist is in it's death throes but it ain't going quietly or quickly and whatever else evolves to take it's place hasn't got a name yet...

for to speak of the tao is not the tao...;)
 

sherief

Generic Human
HELL_SD said:
then just see it and maybe one day everyone will. We spoke it into existence, we can speak it away

Did we really though? We built it into existence, we created the machines (both physical and metaphorical) that have cut these borders and these heirarchies, and it wasn't simply a leap into a new type of language of opression. To quote Walter Benjamin:
[Training the working class that they would redeem the future] made the working class forget both its hatred and its spirit of sacrifice, for both are nourished by the image of enslaved ancestors rather than that of liberated grandchildren.
King never forgot the current slavery and the past enslavement, and though he seemed an idealist he put into action a program that realized this particular conciousness that you speak of, but also realized the urgency of history and the necessity of action, radicality. From the same "I have a Dream" speech:
So we have come to cash this check -- a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice....
King's famous dream came only at the end of a speech which one rarely sees in its entirety, because it is aware and insistent of the failures of the past and the injustice of the present. King knew that such injustice needed action and that words alone could not destroy the racism that existed. Engagement is crucial.

...I always wondered what happened to the socialist, anti establishment intelligentsia ???

they became bloggers, forumsluts and postwhores...no offense
You can't just say that. On the one hand, you may have a point that many people have taken the comfort of a blog or forum instead of trying to make change in the world, bu there are many others who use these things to communicate and share ideas, and then use those to go out and change the world. I know you were being hyperbolic, but I think the association is unfair and unrealistic.

... from what i can understand instituting universal socialism is exactly like forcing a global monoculture on the masses and doesn't account for the fact that humans by their very nature aren't globally minded or monocultural or even altruistic. Didn't we learn anything from the soviet collapse ???
I think this is far from the case. On the one hand, the soviety collapse did show us the dangers of a stalinist state socialism, as have many other 'experiments' of this sort around the world. However, the true socialist revolution is nodal, networked-it exists as locally situated and driven politics but as part of an accumulative global struggle. "Humans by their very nature" those are the real defeatism, we have no less nature than we're willing to believe. It's easy to hold on to power when you can convince those you rule under that they dont' have the power to change, and that by their very nature they already are in the safest system.

The Internet is no salvation, but we can reappropriate it as a tool within limits, just as we can with anything. For all their exclamation-points, Hardt and Negri recognize how the process of real social revolution and emancipation occurs when we actively take the machines and systems that oppress us and recognize that the heirarchies are fake and the police don't always have to win. Socialism in this way is not a flattening of desires, but the creation of collectives, groups, dare I say multitudes, which recognize the heteronomy of discourses and interests and fight to create an actual egalitarian space where they can be recognized without becoming totalizing
 
everything at some point was spoken into existence, even Marx socialism...

...before racism had a name it was just cultural bias

the revolution will not be televised, it will be streamed on the net and blogged about on forums...

...a critical mass of like minded individuals will one day say, enough is enough and words given substance and power will in some instances dissipate while others will echo amongst the heavens for all to hear

in the beginning was the word and in the end there will be silence, a comforting silence where words aren't neccessary and many a thing will have been spoken out of existence...

...yeah I been smoking the good stuff lately and if i had any sort of a voice I'd be lacing trax with this shit...

:)
 

sherief

Generic Human
HELL_SD said:
everything at some point was spoken into existence, even Marx socialism...

...before racism had a name it was just cultural bias

the revolution will not be televised, it will be streamed on the net and blogged about on forums...

...a critical mass of like minded individuals will one day say, enough is enough and words given substance and power will in some instances dissipate while others will echo amongst the heavens for all to hear

in the beginning was the word and in the end there will be silence, a comforting silence where words aren't neccessary and many a thing will have been spoken out of existence...

...yeah I been smoking the good stuff lately and if i had any sort of a voice I'd be lacing trax with this shit...

:)

I don't want to sound mean, but your post corroborates my suspicions that I think politics and pot don't mix. Enjoy the ride.
 
Last edited:

sherief

Generic Human
HELL_SD said:
so you're a non smoking politician then ???

hope thats working for ya ;)


Politician...god I hope not...I stay off the stuff, it doesn't work for me. Life's a bit edgier, but you give and you take
 
Top