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In my post on the identity politics of belly dancing, in which I argued that Randa Jarrar’s recent tirade against white belly dancers must imply the moral inferiority of white women, I bypassed – because I thought it particularly weak – the notion that white belly dancing unwittingly perpetuates racist stereotypes about Arabs, even if there is nothing inherently mocking or belittling about the practice itself or the intentions of white belly dancers. This objection is the substance of a series of comments on the post by reader Harri Siikala, proffered in the jargon of critical theory and cultural studies: “cultural appropriation should be viewed as part of wider social discourse about otherness” – specifically, how “otherness is conceived” (by the dominant class): “one could make an argument tying the innocuous seeming role playing to eroticism, racial otherness, and orientalist ideas of the exotic.” Finally, “we have a moral obligation to be especially sensitive to” the values of minorities “due to their disadvantaged position in society, structural racism” – one that overrides “abstract notions about equality”; “certain socially constructed groups have distinct rights … pertaining to their cultural heritage.”
Siikala also argues that it’s possible that certain practices as so central to the identity of a group that they become its “intellectual property.” Finally, he accuses me of arguing out of a “blind faith in universalizing liberal individualism,” which despite its emphasis on equality can foster inequality by erasing cultural differences between groups. There is a “rejection of difference in the name of equality” – because “evocation of difference becomes jingoistic nationalism, racism, Nazism, or tribalism.” This can in turn be used to justify imperialism, “suppression of cultural revival movements,” and “socio-economic inequality.” He also notes that “post-modern critical theory,” with its “deconstruction” of social boundaries, may ironically lead to the same sorts of results as the classical liberalism I advocate. Finally, he quotes Zizek to the effect that capitalism thrives on “tolerance” and difference, but for himself asserts that such difference is just a façade concealing an underlying “sameness” that is “grist for the mill of capitalism.”
These objections well represent the prevailing style of cultural studies academia, which grandiosely presents simplistic ideas as sophisticated by dressing them up in jargon. Remove the jargon, and you see them for the weak, free-associating generalizations they are: to ask that human beings be treated as moral equals with equal rights is not an assertion that they must be made equal in every other sense, or a demand that we obliterate all cultural differences between them. To argue against racism is not to argue for the suppression of some culture – as if racism could be essential to some group’s cultural identity. In fact, pluralism has thrived in liberal societies precisely because of the concepts of equality and liberty. You may not like the melting-pot effect of a pluralistic society, or the culturally homogenizing effect of capitalism and American popular culture: but do you really think these are an effect of affording human beings equal rights? However much you lament homogenization, only a totalitarian regime would have a chance (and a poor one at that) of reversing it and keeping various cultures in tidy little buckets. Finally, none of my assertions are inconsistent with the idea that liberalism has its drawbacks, or that there ought to be policies to help the disadvantaged.
Let’s move on to the claim that it is important to combat racist stereotypes, and that these stereotypes can be perpetuated unwittingly. I agree. Groups have legitimate anxieties about how they are portrayed, and portrayals ought not to demean them. But whether something is a demeaning stereotype doesn’t depend on the hurt feelings of any one individual. What’s critical is that the practice or image in question has – like blackface – historically been used as a form of mockery or caricature; or is so sacred that any appropriation is necessarily too casual to count as anything but caricature. We can appeal to some extent here to the sentiments of the majority of a given group, although we know these aren’t necessarily decisive (for various reasons, a group may not register or voice offense to certain disparagements, and might even participate in them – blackface performers included African Americans). But the sentiments of an offending group are also not irrelevant: any objection to some practice or image is an appeal to conscience, and if some demand seems to grotesquely exceed the demands of conscience, or asks for too great an abdication of rights by some segment of society, it will ultimately be rebuffed. “I feel demeaned by the practice of gay marriage” is not an objection that a liberal society ought to take seriously.
Jarrar’s objections fail to meet any of these standards. There is no history of widespread use of the practice of belly dancing to belittle Arabs in the way that blackface was used to belittle and mock African Americans. Belly dancing has a long history in the United States, with Turkish and Arab Americans (and others) actively facilitating its adoption by white women (by, among other things, teaching them and employing them in clubs and restaurants). Likewise, the belly dancing of foreigners has a long history in the Middle East. There is no history of vocal, widespread objection to white belly dancing by Arab American or other communities. Objections to white women belly dancing are the province not of Arabs or Arab Americans, but of the sort of mindset common to the advocates of identity politics. Jarrar is not the chosen ambassador of Arab-Americans, and most Arabs would probably find her position on this matter strange, exotic, and “other.”
I do understand, by the way, that with the use of words like “otherness” and “othering,” the advocates of identity politics can advance the notion that any cultural contact or exchange between more and less powerful groups is a form of abuse. But in doing so, they conflate the existence of racist stereotypes with a more general suspicion toward the imagined mindset of a politically dominant group. Siikala’s talk of “eroticism, racial otherness, and orientalist ideas of the exotic” allows him to conflate the very separate issues of whether some practice or image actually perpetuates a racist stereotype; and whether it might be, even if it is not inherently racist, fodder for the racist, chauvinistic, or sexual thoughts of some white person somewhere (or, if we are to imagine that the minds of white people are uniformly compromised, of white people in general). This is really the core meaning of “appropriation” at stake here: belly dancing is not a racist stereotype per se, but might be once it undergoes an alchemical transformation in the minds of the white people who have mentally appropriated and thus corrupted it. By that standard, we might ban all men from contact with children on the chance that any one of these men could be a pedophile. It’s a very low burden of proof indeed.
This sort of suspicion is made to seem more plausible by the association of appropriation with theft, an association to which Siikala appeals with the notion of “intellectual property.” Another commenter makes a similar point, arguing that belly dancing is participation in a “racist and oppressive dynamic” and “a history of cultural imperialism and expropriation,” one that need not be intentional, and indirectly harms Arabs in the way that buying cheap clothing harms the victims of child labor. These objections ignore the fact that appropriation as theft is a metaphor. White belly dancing cannot literally be theft: it cannot rob Arab women of the practice of belly dancing. And it cannot really be theft of intellectual property, in the sense that it deprives someone else of financial gain from their copyrighted work. More generally, we can argue that it’s unfair for society to recognize and reward, for example, not a black blues musician but the white rock band influenced by him. But this argument actually has nothing to do with theft. Musical influence is just the way music works: disparities in recognition and reward are a matter not of theft by some band but of the racism of audiences or some other social factor. But none of this is applicable to white belly dancing: in this case, the concept of theft must signify something else.
If appropriation is not literally theft, we must try to make sense of the metaphor of appropriation, and how it could be given a meaning that constitutes participation in a “racist and oppressive dynamic.” We’re left with Siikala’s suggestion concerning a theft of identity: certain groups must be able to keep aspects of their identities to themselves. But we can only explain this need in terms of the harm it would cause to see others – or especially white people – participating in practices associated with those identities. And I can think only of two ways to explain this harm, once we have ruled out the perpetuation of a racist stereotype or some more literal theft. The first involves suspicion as to the universal maliciousness of white thoughts, which I described above. The second appeals to the hurt feelings that I focused on in my first post, using the following sort of logic in the case of belly dancing: “the belly dancing of a white woman – this metaphorical ‘appropriation’ – reminds me of the literal appropriation of antiquities and ancestral lands, along with everything else oppressive about colonialism. I understand it was the literal appropriation that was oppressive in the original sense, and that metaphorical ‘appropriation’ cannot be oppressive in the same way. And yet by way of this metaphor, belly dancing reminds me of colonial oppression, and hurts my feelings. And these hurt feelings are in turn a form of actual oppression.”
But hurt feelings cannot constitute a form of oppression, unless they’re a reasonable response to some actually oppressive act – like the actual deployment of a racist stereotype, or actual theft. And they certainly cannot constitute a form of oppression if they are simply predicated on one’s own pejorative race-based generalizations.
Unfortunately, it’s precisely such generalizations that are essential to Jarrar’s argument and my readers’ objections. Without them, we cannot slide so effortlessly from the prohibition on racial stereotypes to the prohibition of cross-cultural exchange predicated on sweeping assumptions about the attitudes of white people. Nor can we move from metaphorical “appropriation” to actual theft: in Jarrar’s case, only an illegitimate race-based generalization could cause her to choose, when she looks at white belly dancers, the metaphor of appropriation as theft over that of sharing or exchange. (Similarly, only an illegitimate race-based generalization could lead us from crimes statistics to treating every black person as a criminal). For Jarrar’s hurt feelings to be legitimate, it must be the case that every white person is the representative of the worst crimes of their race. Either they must be collectively responsible for these crimes, or they must have an essence that makes such crimes typical of their type.
The identity politics adherent tells us that such race-based generalizations are acceptable in this instance, because they flow from less to more powerful groups. But to make this notion work, we must discard the idea that racism is wrong on principle, and replace it with something like the notion that we owe a certain fealty to aggrieved groups that is so strong that it transcends principle. This militates against the whole point of justice, which asks us to rise above our group-based loyalties, to treat every human being as equally worthy of respect and fairness. Instead, we need not adhere to a principle of justice as long as we have a victim of injustice to put in its place. We determine what’s just not with reference to principles, but by assessing the relative group power dynamics of the relevant parties. Victimhood creates an exception to any rule; principle is subverted by identity. That’s why it’s OK in the eyes of some, for instance, to keep Palestinians in a stateless state of abject misery: they have nothing in their history that approximates the gravity of the Holocaust, and therefore they cannot be the “real victims” relative to Israelis (to deploy a phrase I see used frequently in objections to my posts).
But if racism is sometimes acceptable, we can no longer use principles – or reasons – to appeal to the conscience of the opponents of minority rights. We can no longer try to persuade white bigots to give up their identity-based loyalties, if what we are advocating is essentially the priority of identity-based loyalty for another group. We cannot argue against their racism on principle, because we have said that as long as the power dynamics are right, racism is OK: to justify their racism, they need only craft a narrative in which they are the “real victims” (something that will be easy for many poor and lower class whites, whose lived experience of socioeconomic struggle will always be at odds with the “white privilege” that far more wealthy and educated elites of all races tell them they have). With principles no longer available to us, the best we can do is to overpower our political opponents, either by political force or political indoctrination (of the kind that now dominates humanities academia). These methods will always lead to unstable consequences, because power is complex and ever-shifting, and because those susceptible to your indoctrination will only include an elite minority (especially wealthy white students) who already feel so socioeconomically secure that submitting to the demands of identity politics is the only thing that could enhance their sense of superiority – by gilding it with the aura of moral superiority that comes from repeated confessions of one’s “white privilege.”
This approach – in which one merely overpowers or indoctrinates rather than persuades one’s political opponents – essentially replaces the concept of justice with that of might-makes-right, and represents a loss of faith in the efficacy of reasons and principles. That may seem fine if you think you can win a raw power struggle. But history should tell you that you can only win such struggles in the short term. Far more effective in the long term is adherence to principle, and the kind of appeal to conscience that gave the civil rights movement its real power.
Identity politics substitutes for the notion of human equality a sliding scale of moral worth, one that depends on one’s membership in groups that historically have been on the losing side of power relations. Siikala does not need to remind us that the advocates of identity politics are anti-liberal, or that they find the notion of equality “abstract.” Ultimately, liberalism doesn’t suit identity politics because it resists the pejorative group-based generalizations on which identity politics is premised. One need not have blind faith in liberal individualism, or think liberal societies free of problems, to find certain anti-liberal ideas repugnant and ultimately totalitarian in spirit.
These ideas are motivated by the desire not for justice, but for a form of cultural revenge, or – for those who get off on it because they believe it morally sanctifying – a sadomasochistic compliance with revenge. Jarrar’s article in particular is a means of avenging her race-based resentments by trying to induce guilt or shame. Her real claim – and it’s one that she makes clear in a very sad follow-up piece – is that she is entitled to her own racism because it’s her compensation for the racism she has suffered at the hands of whites. Ultimately, her dislike of white belly dancers is predicated not on their racism but hers, thinly veiled by the posture of victimhood: that’s what really hurts Jarrar’s feelings, and it’s not the kind of hurt that could ever deserve our sympathy, if we recall the historically murderous consequences of any politics that treats morality as a function of pitiability.
— Wes Alwan
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Bravo Wes! But somehow I think addressing these issues with people so entrenched in their self-righteous identity politics is akin to you peeing into a gale force wind… For the record, I know of a few “Black” and one “Asian” belly dancers. What could that mean?
That you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Nice way to add to the discussion… Anonymity is easy. My comment was with my tongue firmly planted in my cheek. Then again I guess I should make it known that I consider myself a misanthrope, so take anything I say with that in mind.
Then I guess you were making fun of Wes and the liberal tradition that takes those trashy argument with any degree of seriousness.
You caught me!
Thank you, Wes, for this lengthy reply.
I guess I deserve the jab about empty cultural studies rhetoric for fleetingly, and rather cheaply, evoking Gramsci’s notion of hegemony and Foucauldian power structures, though my argument didn’t rely on such theories. As an anthropologist I often find cultural studies approach ethnographically shallow, and I did indeed point out that “critical theory has been long plagued by self-defeating political hyper-vigilance which tends to reduce the complexity of cultural representation to a kind of power functionalism.”
As for free-associating generalizations, I’ll admit to the charge for my last couple of comments where I tried to pick at a deeper philosophical problem “about the way in which society or social existence is conceptualized” (while noting I was drifting off topic). Here I was drawing on the tradition of thinkers like Alexis de Tocqueville who while celebrating equality noted its alienating effects and Louis Dumont who juxtaposed modern individualism with holistic ideology. As for my argument about conservative aspects of postmodernism, I had a few days prior heard a talk by Anthony Steinbock on moral emotions and modernity where he presented a similar intellectual trajectory (I cribbed the phrase “difference that doesn’t make a difference” from the talk), though the problematic is very familiar to me from postmodern critiques of the “essentializing” anthropological project. Now I’m ready to defend the idea that individualistic emphasis on equality in the context of nation states and the modern capitalist system can both create and maintain massive structural inequality, but this is another debate so I’ll stick to the topic of appropriation.
Couple of things. I never claimed that Jarrar was right, in fact I agreed that “it’s debatable whether belly dancing represents in any way a heinous example of cultural appropriation” and stated that I do not know if one can “seriously” make an argument that it is racist. However, I was against a “cursory dismissal of the type of argument she makes”. So is it obvious that appropriation of belly dancing is not racist, to the point we can turn the table and assert that it’s clearly Jarrar who is the racist here?
You say: “What’s critical is that the practice or image in question has – like blackface – historically been used as a form of mockery or caricature; or is so sacred that any appropriation is necessarily too casual to count as anything but caricature.” I think this is a little too simplistic. There are ways in which cultural representation of the “other” (whether racial, cultural, whatever) can be distorting in detrimental ways even when no mockery is intended or historically implied or no sacred value is broken against; in fact even when the other is valorised or idealized. There is a wealth of literature on this, but I could recommend a very readable book by Sally Price called Primitive Art in Civilized Places, which analyses the depiction of non-Western “primitive art” by connoisseurs of the Western art world, who while celebrating it propagate certain deeply ingrained prejudices.
The word that gets bandied about when talking about belly dancing is orientalism, which comes from Edward Said’s 1978 book where he attempts to show how scholarship and popular culture has constructed an image of the Orient as a stereotypical mirror image of the West (one is objective, secular, and rational, the other inscrutable, spiritual, and mysterious and so on). Along these lines I suggested that “one could make an argument tying the innocuous seeming role playing [of belly dancing] to eroticism, racial otherness, and orientalist ideas of the exotic.” Now I’m no big fan of Said, I already stated that I thought his critical argument was “simplistic,” and I’m certainly not an expert on the history and globalized practice of belly dancing, but it seems to me there is some evidence that part of the appeal in certain contexts has to do with the sensual, mysterious, and spiritual aspects of the cultural otherness (and I doubt that any serious scholar would completely dismiss the orientalist critique). I’d also argue that it is not about conflating a borrowed cultural image and possible racist interpretation, context matters and Jarrar certainly seems to think that the practice is significantly transformed in the process, so no semiotic alchemy is required (though beyond altering the practice one might argue that what is picked up and how it is interpreted is not arbitrary nor purely subjective and is thus consequential; surely we can’t simply reduce these cultural prejudices to a personal issue here).
You points out that “there is no history of vocal, widespread objection to white belly dancing by Arab American or other communities. Objections to white women belly dancing are the province not of Arabs or Arab Americans, but of the sort of mindset common to the advocates of identity politics.” Now this is an empirical issue and I have no idea how widespread the notion of an offence is and in which contexts (though I suspect neither have you). If it is true Jarrar could be merely venting about a personal issue, perhaps understandably because of discrimination and marginalization she has experienced. There are other examples of similar more widely recognized arguments however, for example by indigenous populations who feel exploited and disenfranchised (Native Americans, New Zealand Maoris, take your pick). Does this mean they are not participating in “identity politics?” Are you saying there are good and bad identity politics, depending whether claims are justified by being validated by a moral framework shared by more than one person? Now you may equate identity politics only with liberal guilt, moral superiority, and highfalutin rhetoric of privileged academics, and we may certainly point to specific theoretical discourses, but similar arguments can come from all spheres of the society where people who feel disempowered struggle to have their voice heard.
Being an anthropologist I am acutely aware of the possible excesses of a certain critique of representation. A critical turn in the eighties nearly paralyzed anthropology as a comparative discipline by arguing that one cannot represent other cultures without necessarily distorting them through the lens of ones own and imposing a power dynamic; that all representations are geared toward maintaining power relations one way or another, so we should stick to describing inequality in our own society. Needless to say I find this problematic and as Marshall Sahlins has wryly pointed out such political hyper-vigilance becomes another kind of essentialism:
“surely it is a cruel post-modernist fate that requires the ethnographer to celebrate the counterhegemonic diversity of other people’s discourses— the famous polyphony or heteroglossia—while at the same time he or she is forced to confess that shis own scholarly voice is the stereotypic expression of a totalized system of power. It seems that imperialism is the last of the old-time cultural systems. Ours is the only culture that has escaped deconstruction by the changing of the avant garde, as it retains its essentialized and monolithic character as a system of domination. So anthropologists can do nothing but reproduce it.”
About identity politics beyond whether Jarrar is right or not:
I hope I made clear that I used “intellectual property” metaphorically (actually as a simile), both property and rights have an uncomfortably legalistic tone in this context. Yet it is apt, since many oppressed and marginalized groups have to voice their grievances in the rational-legal system that may be alien from the point of view of the kinds of moral claims they try to make.
http://lanfiles.williams.edu/~mbrown/Brown-CopyrightingcultureCA98.pdf
Indeed beyond racism the question becomes, are we morally obliged to grant different groups different moral or legal rights based, perhaps, on traditional ownership of land or a particular cultural practice, or are we, referring to equality that must rise above group based loyalties, denying the existence of such groups (as far as they are based on such rights)?
Certainly many Western nations do grant such separate legal rights, including the US. Affirmative action could be thought of as a race based generalization, but what makes it more just than some other claim? Perhaps because it is merely an attempt to redress an economic or social imbalance and is not about exclusion (though obviously the practice involves exclusion). What if you are excluded from membership to a particular group (native American tribe say), or excluded from participating in a cultural practice that a particular group claims itself. In many cultures certain dances, rituals, songs, stories etc. are claimed by specific kin groups. Does modern liberalism override all such group boundaries? Certainly we frequently have the legal right to transgress such boundaries, but what about a moral right?
As I argued I feel we need to be sensitive to such claims of cultural ownership because of the disadvantaged position of many such groups. Culture may become a valuable resource for a group with scant other resources and appropriation may be felt as a real loss. This loss may not be monetary, but this does not automatically mean that it involves racist attitudes. As I tried to emphasize we need to look at social repercussions when talking about moral rights. (see my example of Samoan tattooing)
I’d be curious how you see these issues fitting with you argument against identity politics.
Equality is an abstraction in the sense that it is a cultural value projected on a social reality that is always a priori divided by difference and various forms of inequality, indeed necessarily so. One could make the argument that this is a thorny issue because against the backdrop of universalizing individualism difference is hard to account for except in terms of power. Is difference always predicated on a pejorative distinction between an in-group and an out-group? Indeed what makes identity politics so combustible is that it is often linked to social dynamic filled with antagonism and resentment. This is why we constantly keep coming back to racism (or reverse racism), though race is merely one social category and not necessarily the locus of identity in all cases (though it’s certainly prominent in the US). I tried to highlight two separate aspects of the appropriation question: (1) we should avoid appropriation that reproduces humiliating sentiments or distorting stereotypes and (2) we may feel an obligation to give distinct rights to disadvantaged minorities according to their particular cultural needs because the loss of our right is lesser than their gain (indeed such concessions hardly balance the scales). Because these two arguments get entangled in the politicized debate we can come to the conclusion that this is not about “justice” but “cultural revenge” that rises from the resentment of the marginalized. If I may be so bold as to suggest that rather than revenge (get whitey!) identity politics is often about the struggle of disempowered people to have a voice, a degree of self-determination relevant to them, and to preserve what they perceive to be their identity and cultural heritage.I’d suggest there is still some way to go before we get to goosestepping.
Now despite my strong reservations, I agree that Wes has a point. As an unfolding process identity politics can involve all kinds of excessive claims and simplifications (as any other political debate).
I should point out that academically these issues are far from my interests, and that I’m hardly an expert on cultural politics or appropriation.
On a lighter note here’s a song about cultural appropriation, hybridity, commodification, and all that jazz.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDqfywQua5E
I’m just an English boy who won a holiday in Waikiki.
Across the coral sands I saw a hula hula dancer, looking pretty.
I asked her where she came from and she said to me,
“I come from New York City,
And my mother is Italian,
And my dad’s a Greek.”
I’m just an English boy who won a holiday in Waikiki.
It’s a hooka hooka on the shiny briny on the way to Kona,
And in a little shack they had a little sign that said Coca Cola,
And even all the grass skirts were PVC.
I’m just an English boy who won a holiday in Waikiki.
James Clifford’s article (2000) on identity politics that can hopefully shed light on the issues complexity and problematic contradictions:
http://people.ucsc.edu/~jcliff/identity_politics.pdf
I think this post represents a terrible trend for liberals. You take the “jargon” of cultural studies and rearticulate it in liberal terms, and wow, as it turns out, the liberal argument wins! Who would have guessed?
It doesn’t make sense for me to try to engage this point until we get one thing straight: this strategy of re-articulating your opponent’s arguments “without jargon” is a way for you to strawman someone else’s position. You’ve done, what, 70 something of these philosophy readings? By now you must know that if I explain Nietzsche in Hegelian terms he seems awfully Hegelian, and vice versa. The whole point of the “jargon” is that the typical language which we use is inadequate to describe the phenomenon at hand. If you think that the language that they are using is inappropriate, maybe do the reading(s) necessary and challenge them on whether their usage of the language is appropriate. Or, if it is, then don’t “translate” it. If you don’t know why they’re using the language they are using then you aren’t up to the task of actually responding to them.
You don’t understand identity politics, but if you did you would understand not only why cultural appropriation is unacceptable but also why this translating practice is unacceptable. I wonder if you would have the gall, as a white man, to tell someone like Spivak that the ideas she has are “simple” compared to the presumably sublime knowledge of your white male counterparts. I wonder if you’ve actually read any of the relevant literature regarding “identity politics.” Because it takes as a point of departure the absolute failure of endeavors like this.
Down with Whitey!!! Down with the White Devil!!!
…seriously?
You probably have opinions about Malcolm X without having ever even heard him speak, right?
I don’t know anything about Malcolm X, nor do I have any opinions about him. I guess that means I have no business commenting on any of this.
Anonymous,
I read Malcolm X’s Autobiography and saw the excellent Spike Lee film on his life. I have an extemely positive image of him as a courageous and lucid leader. I wonder what position someone as brilliant as Malcolm would take today in the age of Obama and in an age in which identity politics has degenerated from an affirmation of black identity and pride in Malcolm’s time to current squabbles about whether white belly dancing is racist and about whether middle class Arab-American women are less privileged than poor white lesbian belly dancers, because of what happened during the crusades or because of the illegal Israeli occupation of Gaza.
I guess Wes puts things in liberal terms, among other reasons, because the most succesful societies we know in terms of democratic order are liberal. If you want to criticize the U.S. (and there are lots of lots of reasons to criticize it), try social-democratic and peaceful Holland or Norway or Denmark: they are still liberal. When was the last time Holland attacked anyone?
Experiments in non-liberal social orders have not functioned very well. That’s the historical experience.
Liberalism seems the best existing way to order societies. I know of no other with its track record.
White mythology at its best, people! Everyone was barbaric before John Locke, Adam Smith, David Ricardo! Our white male heterosexual saviors!
There are plenty of criticisms of Holland, Norway, and Denmark, but you don’t understand the “cultural studies” criticism if you think its a criticism of individual societies. This “field,” if we are forced to demarcate it in such a way, criticizes not particular societies but the field of power relationships in which these take part.
I prefer to derive liberalism from Spinoza, who, as a Sefardi Jew, was dark-skinned (according to contemporary descriptions), rather like an Arab today and since he never married, may well have been gay.
Being a Jew excommunicated for heresy, with pantheist ideas, in century in which heretics were still burned at the stake, Spinoza had all the more reason to advocate a liberal order of things. Jonathan Israel describes Spinoza’s singular contribution to liberalism in his study, The Radical Enlightenment.
http://books.google.cl/books/about/Radical_Enlightenment.html?id=sABgaBCtfSIC&redir_esc=y
Ah, Spinoza. If I were you, I’d check out Gilles Deleuze’s short book on Spinoza. He has a brief discussion of liberalism and the relationship to Spinoza which I think is relevant.
Deleuze’s books on Spinoza are great. I’m glad to see we agree about something.
OK, well given that you generally like Deleuze’s books on Spinoza, how do you handle his criticism of those who would interpret Spinoza as a pure liberal?
Hi Anonymous,
I missed your new comment.
Spinoza is a liberal. Read his Political Treatise.
I’m not saying you’re wrong, I was wondering how you reconciled the two beliefs.
Anonymous,
When I said that Deleuze’s books are great, I did not mean that everything he says convinces me.
Deleuze is full of insights. He’s a genius and he’s fun to read.
Sometimes he confuses what Spinoza says and what Gilles Deleuze believes. He does the same thing with Nietzsche. However, his book on Nietzsche is also full of insights and fun to read.
Fair enough; I was just wondering. I think that you’re right in saying that Deleuze WANTED Spinoza to not be a liberal, but that he was; I haven’t read the works of Antonio Negri on Spinoza but I wonder how he reconciles the two.
Anonymous,
I haven’t read Negri either.
Deleuze, as I recall (it’s been a few years since I’ve read him), emphasizes Spinoza’s metaphysics or ontology of power: all there is is power (which you can call “God” or “nature” or “reality”).
That’s there in Spinoza of course, but from that Spinoza draws liberal conclusions.
I suppose that you also could draw non-liberal conclusions from a world of immanent power, as, for example, Nietzsche does as well as do Deleuze and Foucault.
Another interesting study:
Spinoza and the Rise of Liberalism
by Lewis Feuer
http://books.google.cl/books/about/Spinoza_and_the_Rise_of_Liberalism.html?id=U4698YERGPMC&redir_esc=y
The Limits of Liberalism: On the Political-Ethical Discussion concerning Communitarianism
http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/honneth1.htm
http://www.crimethinc.com/podcast/20/