Re: [Fwd: [Fwd: [Fwd: Re: Prof. combats ignorance about Islam,women]]]

[Doug Henwood <dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx>]

Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:

> Being an immigrant, I am somewhat an outsider to the US left politics, but
> from the day one I came into contact with it (at some Berkeley conference
> in 1983)  - I have been apalled by its preoccupation with symbolism,
> identity, and guilt trips - and at the same, its arrogance and
> self-righteousness.  It was something that evaded my understanding for a
> really long time until I came to a contact with the AA groups.  I saw those
> groups as psychotherapy cults that, instead solving social problems, aimed
> at making an individual more "adjusted" to the status quo.  They used a
> simple trick (that most total institutions use): first by instilling the
> notion of guilt to make you renounce your own identity, and then by
> replacing that renounced identity with the one created by the group or cult.

What you describe as aspects of "left" culture in the U.S. are really
reflections of broader aspects of U.S. public culture: for example,
the foregrounding of personal narrative and experience (rather than
systemic analysis), the foregrounding of "identity" (a more radical
take on classic U.S. ethnic and interest group politics), and, more
recently, the therapeutic approach to politics (witness the present
occupants of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave).

If you're using a disparaging characterization of "identity" as a way
of disparaging the analysis of sexual and racialized oppression, then
I've got to take exception. But you're not doing that, are you?

Doug