RE: Fambly Values was - RE: AUT: America Implodes

[".: s0metim3s :." <s0metim3s@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Harald:

: Angela, "the result often being"? What
: kind of knee-jerk
: reaction in that?

"Often" is a qualifier.  And no, I don't think
there was any "knee-jerking" involved; but there
is impatience on my part over a set of recent
discussions on this list which range from the way
"particularism and universality" are figured to
the ways in which the question of class
composition should challenge (but sometimes does
not seem capable of) the paradigmatic elevation of
'white, straight men' (or the 'cognitariat' or the
'industrial working class' or whomever) to the
pantheon of a representational politics, which
always requires such elevation and is therefore
always, implicitly, mediatory if not explicitly
vanguardist.  I don't think those who fly the flag
of 'the multitude' have escaped this pressure
toward representational politics any more than
those who prefer 'the working class.'  What's at
stake for me is not which flag to fly ... [but I'm
rushing along here]

So, let's take a step back.  You wrote that:

a) "voting Bush and 'family values' most likely
must in a certain sense also be understood as
anti-capitalist response," and that this has
"terrible little to do with 'race'" ;

b) that this recourse to "family values" is
"something to hold onto" when the world seems to
be disintegrating into chaos;

c) that the development of the "multitude" is akin
to the development of "particularism," if not the
conditions of post-WWI Germany (Weimar, the rise
of Nazism).

Your arguments against "particularism" on this
list are longstanding.  What's apparent in the
above is that, for you, the kinds of politics
which are expressed in "family values" is *not* a
form of "particularism."

I disagree, strongly. And one of my reasons for
doing so is the same reason NewDem gave for
finding your remarks to be "profound."  As I
wrote, the working assumption here is that the
identity of the class is essentially white, male
and straight.  Other forms of identity are
reckoned as "particularistic," conceded as part of
the "chaos and disintegration" that capitalism
ushers in.

And please, I'm sure you can make an argument that
"family values" includes many aspects which are
not reducible to homophobia; but it would be bad
faith to argue that on this occassion the prompt
for your post was not a discussion about the
Marriage Act and the paranoiac 'defense' (assuming
that it needs defending) of heteronormativity.

You gave credence to the argument that "family
values" need defending -- the fantasy which
pruports that they are 'under attack' and part of
capitalism's "disintegration and chaos" -- and
that such a defense is thereby "most likely in a
certain sense ... anti-capitalist."

PS. So yes, I'm probably far too impatient for
this conversation.  I'm not interested in taking
NewDem seriously enough to engage in an argument
there -- those kinds of homophobes aren't entirely
repressive, whatever else is said.  They like to
talk about HOMOSEXUALITY all the time.  A lot.
About how it's EVERYWHERE YOU TURN.  I'm not
interested in countering his paranoiac HOMOSEXUALS
ARE COLONISING US fantasy with arguments which go
something like: 'There are good gays and bad
gays.'  It's not like heterosexuals have to prove
that their sexuality does not put them at risk of
being traitors to the class or Cause somesuch; and
it's not like NewDem's paranoia will be countered
by such an argument.  And I'm not interested in
supporting struggles for recognition or
representation (including 'Gay Marriage'
campaigns, 'Gays in the Military,' etc) -- but I
am surprised that so few people here understand
the dynamics of queer politics enough to know some
of the details of debates around those questions.

Angela
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