[PEN-L:3673] Re: Race as a "construct"

[Carrol Cox <cbcox@xxxxxxxxx>]

Louis Proyect wrote:

> Foucault should not be classified as a postmodernist.

Lou, in holding on so fast to "postmodernist" as a category in debate
you come too close to the crime that turned me off on butler permanently
in her NLR article, that of attacking an unspecified (and perhaps
unspcifiable) class of people. (She deliberately refuses to name
opponents, that is she deliberately used the totally detestable rhetorical
ploy of "if the shoe fits, wear it.") The first real tangle I had with you
was on the subject of "The Left" and humor a couple years ago, in which
I argued that general statements about "The Left is such and such" are
almost always destructive, because "the left" simply doesn't name any
coherent collection of people to who a general label can be applied.

There are postions to be attacked (and in reference to specific positions
you and I are usually in agreement), but I think it usually the best (and
sometimes
the only ethical)  way is simply to describe the position without ascribing
it to some category of people *or* to use proper names. "Pomo" just
doesn't do it. It creates too much confusion and opens up too many
sidepaths.

For an extreme example of how this practice of attacking categories
unattached to proper names creates nonsense. On one of these lists
a week or so ago some idiot created two categories, one a category
of poor whites all of whom were assumed to be racist slobs, and a
category of "elitists," all of whom were said to go around attacking
racist slobs for being racist slobs and thus offending poor whites. That
is not an accurate summary of the poster's position, but it is a summary
that the poster left him/herself open to by this ridiculous form of
empty point-scoring rhetoric.

There are a few  exceptions, of course, to the objections I raise here to
general categorizations. Capitalists, cops, and prison guards, for example.
Any exceptions to any general damnation of these groups are aberrations
of no theoretical or practical interest. But I don't think pomos, whoever
they are and whatever they think should be classed with capitalists and
prison guards.

Carrol