[PEN-L:3668] Re: Re: Re: Re: Race as a "construct"

["rc-am" <rcollins@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

carrol wrote:

> And it didn't push blacks down but rather the possessors of that
>wealth extracted it from the labor of blacks.
>Do you really think that the
>plantation owners of the south were more interested in producing
>white supremacy than cotton and rice.


and maggie replied:

>I think they were just as interested in white supremacy as they
>were in producing cotton and rice and tobacco -- and they produced
>dogma on white supremacy iN enough quantity to be able to
>retain the ability to exploit black labor.  ...
>F'rinstance, the slave laws were first passed because
>there were uprisings of both black and white indentured servants
>in the south -- the courts separated the black from the white
>indentures by giving the whites land promised them at the end of
>their contracts and enslaving the blacks.

whilst carrol may well be right in pointing to the economics of
racism, this does not explain why racism exists.   or let me put it
another way, this does not explain why racism is that which is so
readily called upon and nor why it is so incredibly successful.
maggie's remarks go to the heart of this, and I would add that racism,
like sexism, naturalise capitalist social relations, refigure them as
a truth residing in skin and colour and bodies.  without racism,
capitalism would be much less effective in securing the degrees of
consent that it otherwise would I think.  even capitalists know that
we are not reducible to economic calculations, even or especially when
these calculations have in mind a reduction of us to capitalist
imperatives.  more effective to make us work hard for god, nation,
race than for capital....

in any case, for those actually interested in thinking more seriously
about racism and the debate about constructionism might want to take a
look at the excellent essay by harry chang in rrpe, 17:3, that I
mentioned some time ago.

michael wrote:

>The Hall citation
>seemed on an entirely different level than the Butler/Zizek approach.


how so?  butler's approach is I think idealistic, as I've mentioned
before on lbo, since the strategies she looks to seem to me to be
still on the ideal side of the mind/matter divide.  others have
disagreed, arguing that things like performativity need to be seen as
similar to the notion of practice.  in any case, butler and zizek have
very different approaches.  butler leans more to a hegelian dialectics
than zizek does to a marxian dialectics.

tangentially, when people say 'pomo' they are I suspect thinking of
descartes.  which is really funny, but not very accurate.

michael also wrote:
>I mentioned before my affectionate memories of Hidden Injuries of
Class.  Perhaps
>I am alone in thinking that it was a useful book, since nobody else
mentioned

I thought I had replied.  to repeat: it is a very good book.  it is
good precisely because it shows the ways in which  - as you noted -
our very understandings of what constitutes our forms of being are
given to reproducing those things which dominate us.  butler's
concerns are not very far from this at all.

peter wrote:
>What
>bothers me about the pomo/postruc crowd (as with the crit theory
>crowd before them) is that they don't seem to care whether their
>speculations are true. (Many deny the notion of empirical truth-tests
>on principle.)

I would deny the ability of empiricism to deliver us the truth of
capitalism, since any date would more or less provide us with what are
historical results rather than any sense of the processes which go to
making these into facts.  that however is not an original pomo
insight.  it is also one that marx insists upon.

empirical studies will give you a lot, and i use them a lot in my own
work, but not the truth of the matter.  anyway, the position of most
of those lumped in here as pomos
is not that there is not truth, but that attention should be given to
the ways in which certain truth-claims are made and what truths they
seek to suppress in this way.  again, not a very original insight, and
certainly not one which marxist should find threatening.

peter also wrote:

>The importance of stressing this [construction] point is twofold.
>First, it foregrounds the irrationalism of racism, however dressed up
it may be
>(Bell Curve).  While most of us on PEN-L already know this, we are a
>small minority within the larger world and must continually fight to
>get the message across.  Second, it undermines all essentialisms of
race,
>including those of the victims.  If racism is evil, it is important
>that movements to overcome it be effective.  The glorification of the
>supposed virtues of oppressed races, while it might offer comforts to
>those who have suffered from white bigotry, is irrational and
>ultimately sterile.

an excellent point, to which I would add that it is either funny or
very disturbing that someone could argue against race as a
construction at the same time as insisting - but only after being
pressed - that race is only pertinent as an historical result.

and, it always seems to be AFTER 'being pressed' that memories return
of the dialectics between progress and 'back to the land'; of the
importance of a struggle against assimilationism and the struggle
against race as implacable difference.   but dialectics isn't at all
useful when the point of the exercise has very little to do with
racism, and everything to do with staging disputes as a prelude to
'leadership contests'/recruitment drives and a substitute for analysis
and struggle.

angela