Why
So what is going on here? Why is this issue not on the radar?
David Hadley asks:
…within these oppressive religious regimes – in this case strict Islam – there is a form of sexual apartheid too. Where women don’t even get the luxury of being even second-class citizens. Which makes me wonder why none of the left-wing ‘progressive’ media are calling for sanctions and boycotts of these regimes.
Surely it is a great cause for them to rally behind, isn’t it?
Karl adds:
there’s that post-colonial guilt thing going on. Women’s rights, gay rights, individual rights–they’re all so modern and western. They’re all undermining those fragile traditional cultures and turning everyone into atomized consumers who exist without real purpose in shiny soulless Corporate World. Sympathy is reserved for those proud noble tribesmen who are fighting to preserve their unique cultural heritage.
Karl nailed it, I think. It’s the authenticity thing. I was pondering this the other day – why do right-on people feel slightly (or sometimes more than slightly) uneasy about rationalist atheist feminist people from Third World countries when they don’t feel that way about atheists, rationalists, feminists from First World countries? I think it is a guilt thing. The background idea (generally, I think, not very carefully thought about or examined, as background ideas often aren’t, which is why we call them background ideas, hence one that may be vulnerable to argument, eventually) that rationalism etc are ‘Western’ importations and contaminations; that they are not authentic. I think the background idea behind that background idea is a vague postcolonialist guilt about taking away distant people’s authenticity. This relies, of course, on the still further background idea that irrational and anti-rational ideas are natural and authentic while the other kind are not (or else some even weirder idea that they’re in the DNA of Western people and not that of Third World people). I think this is an easy idea to slide into – I think I used to do it myself, hence this hypothesis is partly an extrapolation from my own lumber room of formless unexamined assumptions. I suppose we have some sort of mental picture of rationalist atheist (that’s inaccurate of course, but that’s just it) thrusting capitalist imperialism from The West injecting itself as if from a giant syringe or sexual organ into the irrationalist theist traditionalist rural homogeneous Nonwest. And of that Nonwest as uniformly and consistently Different – Other, you know – from The West, therefore (by definition) not rationalist or atheist or feminist, because those are all items in the syringe. A mental picture of the Third World as something rather like the way women used to be conceptualised – shapeless, formless, chaotic, swirling, opaque, mysterious, and above all uniformly and everywhere completely different from the invading exploiting uninvited imperialists.
In other words, I think there is a tendency to assume that for instance feminism is an importation from the West and that therefore it is, one, not authentic, and two, a contamination. It’s almost a kind of touristy idea. We don’t go to Bombay or Jakarta to eat at McDonald’s, and we don’t go there to encounter rationalist feminists of the kind we could find on any corner in Camden Town or Cambridge. Nosir. When we go abroad, god damn it, we want our exoticism, we want authentic traditionalism and primitivsm. Well, hey, what could be more primitive than oppression of women? Hah? Not much.
And there’s a feeling that it’s too easy. That’s another outcropping of the postcolonialist guilt thing. It’s too easy for us to prefer our own ideas. What’s difficult is to force ourselves to accept the things that trouble us. It’s easy to eat unfamiliar food, but to accept unfamiliar morality, that’s not so easy. So, people often unfortunately conclude, because this acceptance is difficult, therefore it is the right thing to do. Uh oh. Red flag. Wrong, Wrong, wrong, wrong. Look – the mere fact that it is difficult for us to accept that the oppression of women is okay, does not mean that it is in fact okay. It’s not a useful moral exercise for us to force ourselves to think that cruelty and deprivation are good things. That ‘too easy’ thought is one that should put people on alert. It may be a useful insight, and the starting point for asking ‘why do I think this particular idea or taboo is right?’ but it may also be a disastrous starting point for accepting horrors.
Of course all this is all wrong anyway. It simply assumes that only one kind of thinking, one kind of morality, is ‘authentic,’ and that others are importations and injections. But that’s nonsense. The West has no monopoly on rationalism and feminism (and it could be considered quite arrogant and Eurocentric and ethnocentric to think it does) and the Nonwest has no monopoly on irrationalism and antifeminism. Ideas don’t have DNA, and they don’t have passports. Anybody can think of anything. It’s insulting and ridiculous to think or even assume that atheists and feminists from Iran or Pakistan or anywhere else are the slightest bit less ‘authentic’ than misogynist theists are. So get over it, already. Tariq Ramadan is not more ‘authentic’ than Azam Kamguian, any more than the BJP is more ‘authentic’ than Amartya Sen. The ideas need to be judged on their merits. The oppression and subordination of women does not become more noble or acceptable because it’s enacted by ‘devout’ Muslims, any more than the oppression and subordination of dalits becomes more noble or acceptable because it’s enacted by ‘devout’ Hindus. Authenticity is an idea whose time has gone.
A prime recent example of this authenticist idiocy seeping into our pop culture was that Hollywood blockbuster from a couple of years ago, The Last Samurai, in which Tom Cruise sides with the proto-fascist Satsuma Rebellion because Hollywood writers and producers apparently think Saigo and his minions were romantic heroes of Old Japan battling the evils of modernization. Near the end the protagonist makes a impassioned plea for the marriage of modern technology and the traditional martial values of the old feudal society–in other words, exactly what Japan accomplished sixty years later under Tojo and Hirohito. And this from the same director who gave us Glory, too. Jesus Fucking Christ. Flew right under everyone’s radar. (The only movie critic to point out the obvious stupidity here was Stephen Hunter of the Washington Post. Everybody else was apparently too damn ignorant of modern history to notice the flick was inadvertently pleading for fascism.)
Dang. Good one. I haven’t seen the movie, but I think I wondered about that aspect when it came out. There is a lot of authenticist idiocy in Hollywood right now – very good point.
You might have the makings of an interesting article there. Think about it…
A sharp but one-faceted analyses, I think. There seem to be many other factors such as social and/or emotional distantiation, the side-effects of advanced individuality, undercapacity due to competing demands, etcetera.
What is distantiation? And what does the rest of that mean? And what is the ‘etcetera’? You can’t expect me to nod in solemn agreement that I omitted ‘etcetera,’ can you.
Yeah, The Last Samurai bugged me to. I didn’t much like that the film implied that the dying remains of a stagnant feudal heirarchy was automatically better because it was older. Not that the “other side” was that good either, but it was kinda like having a WWII movie and insisting that because Nazis were bad, that the Communists were automatically good.
Thanks, Ophelia, but I think I said pretty much what I wanted to on the matter. It was probably only the “exoticism” of the Japanese and his ignorance of their history that led director Edward Zwick to concoct such a politically dimwitted flick. Zwick, ironically enough, once made a decent Civil War movie about the Massachusetts 54th, America’s first black regiment, but the arguments he makes in defense of Saigo et al. could just as easily be made in defense of the Confederacy: a “noble” Lost Cause to defend a feudalistic order against mass industrial society, etc. (although, as Tanooki Joe suggests, the Meiji government wasn’t exactly analogous to the Union).
1)”Authenticity” is a predicate or epithet that applies to persons and not to “things”, except by way of association. And its implication is that it exists at some considerable distance from traditions or conventions. And, whatever the “function” of the concept, it is, virtually by definition, internally problematic. It would help if you knew or understood something before you denounced it as “abolished”. (Hint: the accusation you are making, in effect,is that the imaginary enemies are themselves guilty of “inauthenticity”, i.e. internally inconsistent with their own professed beliefs.) (Further hint: the attack on “authenticity” is one of the mainstays of postmodernism.)
2) It’s so nice of you to talk about ideas and rights without mentioning economics, i.e. those conditions and distributions that “determine” social interaction with respect to the necessities of life. “Household management” is beneath the level of public importance, wherein it’s ideas that count.
3)Attitudinizing about attitudinizers is still attitudinizing. I remember the reaction of “moderates” to those of us who opposed the Iraq War. They didn’t want to be associated with us dirty, smelly types, since our conceptions were so obviously “easy” and “irrational”. The alleged dispute here is just an internecine affair. A mere 4 billion people on this planet could be reasonably described as oppressed and/or deprived. So, whacha gonna do ’bout it?
To me ‘The Last Samurai’ was a late entry in the “Indians & Cowboys” genre typified by “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee”. These films nicely illustrate your point; if the Indians weren’t after all mindless savages then they must have been wonderful, caring, ecologically friendly savages. No middle ground.
“So, whacha gonna do ’bout it?”
Hang out at B&W’s Notes and Comment section and fill it up with endless screeds. How ’bout you, John?
OB: “What is distantiation?”
Reluctance or refusal to identify with the other person or group, and therefore with the issue, regardless of its prominence.
“And what does the rest of that mean?”
Neoliberal individuality has shifted the focus to the Self-sustainable Citizen, further emphasizing on the above; where “competing demands” are just that – A universe of economical, political and social demands are competing for ‘special’ attention.
“You can’t expect me to nod in solemn agreement that I omitted ‘etcetera,’ can you.”
Well, yes. I can and I probably should. Consideration of what has not been explored is fundamental to the scientific method.
OB and Edmund, you make one hell of a tag team!
Edmund: “I can’t understand what cesperugo and john c. halasz are talking about here.”
I think we are trying to answer OB’s initial question: “Why is this issue not on the radar?”; where I take “this issue” for a reference to the lack of inspiration to intervene (or even to accuse). I think OB was well under way answering this question, but only partly.
“If by ‘the side-effects of advanced individuality’ you mean the sense of atomisation in a society lacking familial/communal cohesion, I would still argue that such side effects are preferable to the kind of oppression/repression found in societies which do not see individual rights as important.”
There does not seem to be a universally acceptable premise to your “argument”. To those in dire poverty, social cohesion is often the discriminating factor allowing for that wonderful commodity we call existence.
OB et al Karl wrote “Sympathy is reserved for those proud noble tribesmen who are fighting to preserve their unique cultural heritage.” Perhaps this thinking occurred on 2001 when there were several incidents of people – western liberals, and not from Muslim countries I hasten to add – apologising for the Taliban shelling those spectacular Buddhist statues in the Afghan mountains prior to 9/11, citing that the statues were not of a culture indigenous to the Afghan region; worse, they were in fact a remnant of colonialisation.
“Absurdly, for example, some left-liberals in Britain recently felt uneasy condemning Jamaican Dancehall music that advocated killing gays that was on sale here, because such attitudes were seen to be ‘part of their culture'”
I think it was actually a bit more difficult than that. A lot of Black Britons and Jamaican people made the gambit that attacking homophobia in dancehall was yet another example of racist and colonialist attitudes in relation to the Caribbean, and how it was actually all the fault of colonialism that these homophobic elements were there so we couldn’t criticise. And this confused and cowed some people.
“Yeah, The Last Samurai bugged me to. I didn’t much like that the film implied that the dying remains of a stagnant feudal heirarchy was automatically better because it was older. Not that the “other side” was that good either, but it was kinda like having a WWII movie and insisting that because Nazis were bad, that the Communists were automatically good.”
On the other hand a lot of films have played to the idea of there being a certain nobility or somesuch in the German soldiers, even if, as it happens, they were doing the bidding of a genocidal dictator.
Surely we can all understand that there is a certain pull to these ideas, the crusader going to battle the saracens for his god, El Cid, Henry V, the plains Indians, the Iliad, etc.
There were liberals who defended the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas? Wow, I missed that. Predictable, though. There were liberals who defended the fatwa on Rushdie. A lot of people think that’s where this particular split in the Left really got started.
Yup, that’s what I’m arguing all right, Edmund – no misreading there.
John, what am I going to do about it? Well, at least do what I can to get the subject out there, since the Guardian and the NY Times can’t be bothered. What’s your point?
“Surely we can all understand that there is a certain pull to these ideas”
Of course we can. That’s exactly the point. There is a pull to these ideas – and they’re bad ideas. That’s why it’s a good idea to try to figure out what the pull is, and to figure out whether or not we want to let the ideas seduce us, and if we don’t, learn to resist that pull. I did say that I think I used to be susceptible to them myself: that my analysis is based partly on extrapolation from what it seems to me I used to think or half-think or vaguely assume. The point is not at all that there is no pull, but that the ideas are bad. There’s a difference.
While I love the fight against this kind of relativism, and I love the WCPIran for pointing out to me how important it was, way back in the 90s, it’s not quite as straightforward as Ophelia’s top rant suggests.
We’re not fighting on a front with a secure hinterland behind us: we’re walking on a line.
Because, whether we like it or not, in the past, lots of people from the North Atlantic seaboard turned up all over the world and said thing like “Hi – we’re civilised and rational, you’re not, and this is a gun, so can we please have all your stuff? Ta.”
Of course, many of them also said “PS – God told me to say that.” so it’s not all one-way for us.
Now, of course it’s time to point out that in many cases it was the very language of rationality that has allowed (some of) the oppressed to throw off (some of) the oppressors. And just because crimes have been committed in the name of rationality, it doesn’t mean rationality is wrong. It’s not.
Fucking strong programme, eh? This is one of the sloughs you run into when lazy fools mistake the description of the thing for the thing itself, or deny the validity of a distinction.
You get the same thing among envirnmental activists who totally separate nature from humanity (the former being good, the latter bad.)
It is a sign of our lack of confidence in our own being. Sad.
Hell yes, Chris, I’m certainly not denying that. Didn’t mean to imply that I was. Postcolonial guilt is there for a reason! But…it can lead to some unfortunate ideas and actions or inactions.
It’s worse than just postcolonialist guilt. The old and very wrong assumption that reason and legal fairness are only “western” is also behind the immoral delicacy about traditional cultures elsewhere.
Edited for length, prolixity, pomposity, and name-dropping.
5) Criticizing Islamic traditions is mostly a matter for Muslims and it is occurring. Much of what is claimed as tradition might have no basis in cannonical “authority”. Executing apostates might be no more legitimate than burning heretics alive. But that would involve broaching the forbidden topic of theology. At any rate, in the Sunni branch, at least, large emphasis is placed on rejecting any intermediation between the believer and Allah, which leads to an inherent crisis of authority, even as the religion casts itself in civil form. Muslim apologists would claim that their religion places great emphasis on human dignity and has a strong egalitarian, if scarcely libertarian, cast. Modernity designates a social formation that must legitimate itself out of its own resources, (since there ultimately is no external standard for external reality.) Muslims grappling with modernity must face that task, as well. On the other hand, the Indian Hindu-nationalist party, e.g., is in part a conservative, “neo-liberal” party that derives some of its support from the emerging, Hindu middle class, that wants to keep its computers and financial markets, while maintaining traditional hierarchies and boundaries of authority. Such an orientation, wishing to avail itself instrumentally of the benefits of the Enlightenment, while blunting any critical force to it, is quite common in the West. It’s nice to see that the Indians are adapting so well to modernity.
“Criticizing Islamic traditions is mostly a matter for Muslims”
Bullshit. You might as well say criticising Nazi traditions is a matter for Nazis.
The above comment is doomed, but I’ll give people a few hours to read it first.
As I think I’ve said before, Halasz, you seem to have B&W confused with your personal notebook.
“Criticizing Islamic traditions is mostly a matter for Muslims and it is occuring.”
Remember, OB, only Muslims can criticize Muslims. They don’t need any outside help, especially from you, woman. John’s got the situation all scoped out, so don’t trouble your pretty little head about such arcane matters. Just shut up and go back to the kitchen and make him a sandwich while he watches the game.
Looks as if we cross-posted, Karl.
Really, John – clearly you enjoy trailing coats, but you can’t seriously mean that comment can you? Or did you just express it sloppily. If you meant something like ‘if there is no one affected by Islamic traditions who objects to them, then no one else should,’ then I can at least see what you mean. But that would be an awfully charitable reading…
Too charitable, OB. Much too charitable. John just doesn’t like uppity wimmin talkin’ ‘bove their station. Now git on in that kitchen bring the sandwich like he tol’ ya, and no backtalk, woman!
OB:
Length is not a criteria of criticism; banality is. And in your occasional zealotry, you display little tolerance for disagreement or critical discussion that does not mimic your own terms of reference. At any rate, your Godwin’s law violation is weak. There is a considerable difference in the scope of application of the categories “Muslim” and “Nazi”, and you neglect the “mostly”. I did not say you have no “right” to criticize, only that criticism requires understanding of what is criticized and a purchase on common ground, if criticism is to have “good” effect. But then, obviously, I’m just “doomed”.
[OB: I didn’t say you did say I had no right to criticise. Are you so caught up in this obsession with lecturing me that you can’t read any more? Try to calm down, try to forget me. Put B&W out of your mind. Take a vacation. Gaze at the sunset. Find someone else. It’s never going to work out between us.]
Karl:
Your reading of what I typed has no basis in it. But go ahead and amuse yourself, if you think that’s “helping out”.
‘criticism requires understanding of what is criticized and a purchase on common ground, if criticism is to have “good” effect’
So, to return to Ophelia’s Nazi analogy…
According to your perspective, in order to effectively criticise the gassing of Jews, one must first be familiar with eugenics literature, Nazi racial theory, social Darwinism, Mein Kampf, The Protocols of Zion, etc. (‘understanding of what is criticized’). Preferably, one should also be a Nazi (‘a purchase on common ground’), albeit one offering internal criticism from a more ‘liberal’ position.
Presumably, criticism of Nazi ideology and practices from a non-Nazi perspective wouldn’t really have any ‘”good” effect’, so why bother?
Translate that into the terms of the current debate – criticism of Islam/oppression by Muslims – and you have a justification for apathy in the face of abuse of women and others (“Hey, that’s a matter for them to sort out amongst themselves”).
Is that ‘helping out’?
Edmund Standing:
One criticizes what is worth criticizing; at least, that is the rational hope behind the idea of criticism. One does not criticize Nazism,- as opposed to trying to understand what happened or criticizing its fellow-travellers, such as Heidegger, Gehlen, Juenger, or Schmidt, who were at least intelligent thinkers, if scarcely morally admirable,- because it is a hollow hodge-podge: there’s no “there” there. One simply fights to defeat it. Is the analogy with Islamic oppression apt? Does one want to defeat the oppression by defeating Islam or does one want those whose adherence to Islamic religion, traditions and culture forms a significant component of their identities to overcoming oppressive tendencies and currents in Islamic beliefs and practices? You asked why mention economics earlier. Well, though I don’t think it’s the whole answer, I’m enough of an historical materialist to think that increases and changes in distributions alter opportunity-structures so as to change “organically” prevailing beliefs and conceptions, just as endemic deprivation and misery give rise to prevalent violence, as well as, to think that understanding one’s own beliefs and conceptions requires reflecting on the material conditions from which they arise, (which is not the same as diminishing their claim to validity.) But debates about rights and relativities do not occur in a vacuum. “Rights” require enforcement, which is to say, institutionalization within the power balances of a given society, which can not exactly be achieved by outside imposition, however much the pressure of outsiders’ concerns might avail, in some measure. But then the terms in which that is cast and the means that would avail are crucial issues. Declaring rights to be “universal” of itself does not make it so. And such universalism can itself have unsavoury uses and consequences. NATO bombed Serbia to enforce “human rights” in Kossovo, but, in the end, it turned out that the total deaths in Kossovo were in the range of 2 to 3 thousand. How many Serbians were killed in the process? I’ve never seen a figure in the media, but one could guess that the actual figure was higher.
John, are you afraid that outside criticism of brutal fundamentalist misogyny in Muslim societies will lead to further entrenchment of said misogyny , or that outside criticism will simply be ineffective and therefore a waste of our valuable time, or what exactly IS your beef with Ophelia? You spend far more time quarreling with her than you do combatting injustice in the world (I base this last estimate on the number of comments you post per day multiplied by the number of minutes it would take to type each one–it doesn’t leave you time for much else). So, whacha gonna do ’bout it?
Or does quarreling with Ophelia constitute battling injustice?
Just trying to help out here, bud.
Karl:
There is certainly the prospect of generating perverse effects, reenforcing what one would oppose by the way in which one opposes it. But I think gist of the dispute is this: if one holds to the equal value of human persons/lives, ceteris paribus, (which condition already requires taking account of variable conditions), clearly a “universal” value, then one must take account of the fact that others will not be just like oneself, accord with one’s identifications, preferences and values, that their values might clash with one’s own or, at least, be sufficiently different so as not to be readily assimilable. In short, one must acknowledge a contradiction at the core of one’s position and recognize the reality and inevitability of value-conflicts. It just won’t do to declare one’s own values and preferences “universal” and objectively valid, even if one in some sense believes that to be the case. (For one thing, that’s just bad “metaethics”, even though I don’t hold to the supremacy of “metaethics”, and, at the limit, talk of “objective values” is just idealist nonsense.) And one’s case is hardly re-enforced by an exaggerated fear of relativism, which is analogous to the epistemological quest for certitude, which adds nothing actual to the real bases of knowledge, except distortion. Any real, serious ethical engagement involves relinquishing self-referential reassurance in the face of others. So in one sense, conflict and thus confrontation is inevitable and must be borne. But there remains an ethically crucial decision between the path of unmitigated opposition and the path of dialogue, either one of which might “prove” justified. But the specific “virtue” of dialogue is that it produces new information, enhancing and shifting the understanding of the perspective of the other, such that, if conflicts are not thereby resolved, nonetheless the remaining differences and disagreements might be contained and altered in their course. Obviously, I don’t approve of or condone the brutalization of women, nor would I at all be tempted to rationalize it, in the name of incommensurable relativities. But I am making objection to the restriction of “rights” to abstract individuals. Any “progress” with respect to rights is a matter of the development of civil societies as a whole, and not of the advancement of a particular group or set of individuals, even if such advancement is a necessary part of the process. And, even with one’s best hopes in mind, I think it is only fair and realistic to acknowledge that different societies will “choose” significantly different arrangements, due to their respective histories, cultural traditions and material conditions, and that, in the end, such differences must be respected, since no one can live others’ lives for them.
The other objection is to the fairly standard schtick of liberals burnishing their credentials by attacking imaginary leftists, who are, of course, fuzzily irrational, muddle-headedly relativistic, full of sentimental nostalgia for the idiocy of rural life, etc., without really taking account of the actual complexion of positions, (since we all know that lefties are firmly entrenched in power, and will tenaciously hold on to their grip on it.) Just to make the point briefly, together with everything else, the U.S.A. ran a current account deficit of $665.5 billion last year, which is roughly estimated to be the entire supply of “surplus” capital in the world. “Post-colonial guilt”- my left foot! There is something to be said about first putting one’s own house in order, as well as, about living in glass houses, given the new-found “transparency” of our “Enlightened”. mass-mediated age. So you’ll have to pardon me, if I don’t quite believe in the august, noble intentions of liberals.
“Surely we can all understand that there is a certain pull to these ideas”
“Of course we can. That’s exactly the point. There is a pull to these ideas – and they’re bad ideas…The point is not at all that there is no pull, but that the ideas are bad. There’s a difference.”
Except that in this case we were talking about these ideas as entertainment. It is a bit silly to be taking moral instruction from the Iliad, but it doesn’t make it illegitimate as entertainment.
“Just to make the point briefly, together with everything else, the U.S.A. ran a current account deficit of $665.5 billion last year, which is roughly estimated to be the entire supply of “surplus” capital in the world. “Post-colonial guilt”- my left foot! There is something to be said about first putting one’s own house in order, as well as, about living in glass houses, given the new-found “transparency” of our “Enlightened”. mass-mediated age. So you’ll have to pardon me, if I don’t quite believe in the august, noble intentions of liberals.”
I must have missed the liberal coup d’etat in the USA.
PM “A lot of Black Britons and Jamaican people made the gambit that attacking homophobia in dancehall was yet another example of racist and colonialist attitudes in relation to the Caribbean, and how it was actually all the fault of colonialism that these homophobic elements were there so we couldn’t criticise. And this confused and cowed some people.”
Well put, I remember reading that line in the Guardian Comment section a few months back, that the Jamaican legislative system set up in the 1800’s by the English fundamentalist Christian colonialists had fixed homophobia in its social laws. (Like, CHANGE them, then work on the message? Just a hunch…)
HOWEVER, I was shocked to hear a presumably reasonable cross-section of young black people in South London being interviewed about the issue on BBC Radio 4 Today programme at around the same time. Not ONE of the young men or women interviewed (there were eight or so in the feature) accepted it (Gangsta-ism) was even anything other than pure entertainment. It was in no way any form of incitement, to harass, dis or beat up on gays, stressing that it was just a vibe in the dancehall (to paraphrase), it didn’t ‘mean’ anything, it was just harmless fun. They all had this line. To them, it may even be true. THEY probably aren’t waiting round corners to trash Brixton twinks… but someone always is I reflected.
It’s Funny. When my two West Indian pals at school in the eighties verbally slayed – with commendable skill and cool – a West-Ham supporting no-brain, fork-in-the-eye National Front amoeba, that was his defence about his puerile shitty racist jokes and jibes (before he utterly caved in and said ‘I dunno, ask my brother, he knows all about it’…) It was just a bit of fun innit ? I mean the black guys in his year were alright. They was different … somehow…
In fairness he was dumber than a bag of glue though. Poor Wayne.
PM’s point relates to the issue here closer than my point, but I have to say it would probably help everyone a great deal if we accepted that a group’s denial of its own pernicious activity is a state that knows no racial, ethnic, religious, economic, socio-political exclusion, and it is up to the group to work it out itself, as much as others to flag it up. And protest. Like OB. Keep it up !
And yes Opheliia, I wish I could find that article about those statues, it was a shocker… I was deeply upset, and most of the protestation against the action came from strong Muslim countries too…
“The other objection is to the fairly standard schtick of liberals burnishing their credentials by attacking imaginary leftists, who are, of course, fuzzily irrational, muddle-headedly relativistic, full of sentimental nostalgia for rural life…”
But I’ve actually met such leftists. In fact, I used to travel in their circles (still do, to some extent). And I know, quite intimately, leftists who put on a reasonable facade in public, and then privately gloat (in my presence) over every setback to the creation of a civil society in the Middle East–which setbacks they interpret as a deliciously long-overdue comeuppance for arrogant America and rotten, decadent Western Civilization. These people really do think that westerners have no right to speak out against the brutalization of women, gays, ethnic minorities, etc. in Third World countries. They think people like Ophelia are useful idiots for the Christian Right and our corporate overlords, naively providing cover for neo-imperialism. Leftists of this stripe may constitute a minority of liberals in the U.S. (and probably elsewhere), but they have become, thanks partly to Fox News and other organs of rightist propaganda, the public face of the Left in this country. That’s why the Christian Right is ascendant in America, that’s why George W. Bush won a second term in office, that’s why the hard-right faction of the Republican Party now controls all three branches of government and probably will for the next several years at least.
Look, John, we get your concerns about right-wing creeps and Christian nutters exploiting the issue of human rights in order to advance their own unsavory agenda. We really do. Will you at least admit that liberals such as Ophelia have taken these concerns into careful account and nevertheless concluded that promoting human rights need not serve the creeps’ and nutters’ agenda? Do you really believe that a see-no-evil-speak-no-evil policy re human rights will help the Left instead of debilitating it even more? Are you questioning Ophelia’s strategy or her entire philosophy?
“There is something to be said about putting one’s own house in order, as well as about living in glass houses, given the new-found ‘transparency’ of our ‘Enlightened’ mass-mediated age. So you’ll have to pardon me if I don’t quite believe in the august, noble intentions of liberals.”
Why does this sound uncannily like Pat Buchanan and America First? Funny how ends meet. (BTW, why does the fake transparency of our media have any bearing on the virtue of minding our own business? Either we should or should not mind our own business, regardless of the definciencies of the mass media.)
I’m not even used to thinking of myself as a liberal, especially not in the sense of ‘more conservative than other brands of leftist.’ Of course, the word has a lot of senses, and there are some senses I would now sign up to in a heartbeat. But others, not.
But then I don’t take it to be more conservative to think even Muslim women and women in majority-Muslim countries ought to have equal rights. And I certainly don’t take it to be more leftist or progressive or radical or anything with that kind of valence, to think and say and act as if female subordination is no big deal as long as it’s the Other doing the subordinating. I think that is the very opposite of leftist or progressive or anything admirable. I think it’s disgusting.
It’s pretty simple, really. What I’m wondering about here is the dead silence of the Guardian and the Independent, and of certain right-on lefty blogs. I would have thought this conference would be worth an article; apparently it wasn’t; I think that’s worth noting. Noting that is hardly equivalent to joining George Bush’s army, or even to handing the left over to George Bush’s minions.
And on a more substantive note. Halasz:
“then one must take account of the fact that others will not be just like oneself, accord with one’s identifications, preferences and values, that their values might clash with one’s own or, at least, be sufficiently different so as not to be readily assimilable. In short, one must acknowledge a contradiction at the core of one’s position and recognize the reality and inevitability of value-conflicts.”
But that’s exactly what I’ve been doing all along. Recognizing the reality of value-conflicts. It’s the people I’m disagreeing with who see the Other as without value-conflicts, and that therefore the only respectful way to treat the Other is to treat existing arrangements as entirely free of value-conflicts and therefore their own business and part of their culture (no value-conflicts there – that culture is a uniform soup) and not to be criticised.
There’s another fact to be taken account of, besides the one that others will not be just like oneself, and that is that in some ways others will be just like oneself, that they will not like being pushed around and imprisoned and deprived all their lives any more than one does oneself. You’re doing what the ‘it’s their culture’ crowd always does – somehow assuming that the dominant voices of a given culture speak for the culture as a whole; that those voices are the only ones that count; that their values which differ from mine are the only relevant values. That’s a stupid assumption.
“Any “progress” with respect to rights is a matter of the development of civil societies as a whole, and not of the advancement of a particular group or set of individuals, even if such advancement is a necessary part of the process. And, even with one’s best hopes in mind, I think it is only fair and realistic to acknowledge that different societies will “choose” significantly different arrangements, due to their respective histories, cultural traditions and material conditions, and that, in the end, such differences must be respected, since no one can live others’ lives for them.”
There again. Societies don’t “choose” as a bloc – that’s my point. And if they are constructed in such a way that some people (like, oh, say, all women) can’t choose, then your statement becomes ridiculous. How difficult can this be to grasp? Societies that systematically exclude whole blocs of people from education, participation, the right to leave the house or talk to non-relatives, not to mention voting, can’t be said to have “chosen” the arrangements they live under. It’s only the powerful non-excluded group who have done that choosing. Why the hell do you want to defend that?
And one more point, Halasz. You keep framing this as if I’m just criticising off my own bat, out of nowhere. But that’s not what I’m doing here – I’m pointing out that there are all these people from majority-Muslim countries and ‘cultures’ who are criticising, and that they’re being ignored. You seem to be claiming that even that is illegitimate. So, what then? No one can give them support and solidarity, no one can even try to make what they say available, who is not also someone from inside that culture? But they want to be heard, remember? That’s part of what they’re talking about – the fact that they do get ignored in the right-on West. You think that’s a fine thing, do you? You think they should be ignored?
Too many comments to respond to in nitpicking detail and I tired, but I thought I was fairly clear and I don’t want to rehearse the narcissicism of small differences. Suffice it to say that I take a more communitarian leaning than those here, on reasoned grounds, and that I don’t think that the grotesque oxymoron of “humanitarian war” amounts to an advancement of human rights, let alone that the current policies of the U.S. government have anything to do with promoting civil society, in the Mid-East, or even Mexico. And the very gesture I criticized with respect to scape-goating a scarcely exisiting left was repeated by referencing Faux News. Let’s just say I was attempting to present a moral-political point of view of worldly realism, which is a different matter than the policies and programs that currently prevail.
Karl:
As a native Chicagoan, I’m despicably prejudiced about California, which is a local joke and source of solidarity. (I do have a brother who lives in CA. He works for Microsoft. ‘Nough said.) But perhaps you could circulate among a better quality of lefties, ones who are not so eager to confirm you prejudices. The one thing the “genuine” left does have left is a robust intellectual-critical tradition, however unsavoury its particular characters, and I’m sure you could find plenty of boys (or girls) who could never catch a fly-ball, but who nonetheless know their schtick. (And, by the way, that reference to “transparency” was mimicing the jargon of “neo-liberal” officialdom and your imagination of me and Pat Buchanan in Seventh Heaven is just gay pornography, which is even less to his than to my liking.)
[Edited for total failure or refusal to address questions asked, simply repeating the same old strawman accusations instead. If you can’t be bothered to reply to objections, Halasz, then stop talking. Put up or shut up, as the saying goes.]
Californians are The Other to John!
Point is, John, that this kind of leftist is far from imaginary. Nuff said.
It’s hard to either “put up or shut up”, when one can no longer access what one is being taken to task for.
Just to add on a few points: you accuse me of “lecturing”: just what exactly are you doing? Further, most internet sites rely on a contest of mutual incompetence- that’s what’s called “debate”. A more relaxed attitude to such exchanges would be more beneficial,- (given that my flaws are legion),- than a censorious attitude. But it’s nice to know that in your endless self-reformation from your supposedly Troskeyite past to Millean enthusiasm, you haven’t forgotten the essential lesson, that the deletion and revision of history serve the greater good of the “cause”.
Oh, yeah. Go ahead and delete away. While inserting self-serving commentary. But in common parlance that goes by the name of “bad faith”. What can I say? “April is the cruelest month” and has long since been forgotten.
Aw, c’mon, Ophelia, ease up on poor John. He needs a creative outlet and your blog’s all he’s got. How’s he supposed to finish writing his three-volume epistolary novel if you keep erasing it?
Johnny darling, it this were my blog, you could fill it night and day with your precious postmodern insights and adorable academic witticisms. You had me at “the cruelest month”!
Karl:
When it comes to shootin’ the breeze, you’re just a breeze.