tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18174466.post2848773592657883591..comments2024-03-28T02:34:41.459-07:00Comments on Qlipoth: Chomsky - The Mysteries Of LanguageQlipothhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17343878659776948134noreply@blogger.comBlogger50125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18174466.post-44639510449684226752010-08-12T06:54:31.193-07:002010-08-12T06:54:31.193-07:00can you identify and substantiate the claims in th...can you identify and substantiate the claims in the article about feminisms and feminists?<br /><br />what does "equality as a race to the bottom" mean and what can it have to do with feminism?Qlipothhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17343878659776948134noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18174466.post-84872905913555164492010-08-12T06:29:57.810-07:002010-08-12T06:29:57.810-07:00Perhaps you are insinuating that it is some positi...Perhaps you are insinuating that it is some position "within feminism" that "it is enough" for ? "to have a job, regardless of what it is", but then you should substantiate that claim by at the very least naming the feminists whose praxis supports your interpretation.Qlipothhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17343878659776948134noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18174466.post-33585874261375703052010-08-12T05:54:31.311-07:002010-08-12T05:54:31.311-07:00"The point of disagreement might arise if and..."The point of disagreement might arise if and when lefties are actually saying that."<br /><br />Saying what? That Nina Power frames the global division of labour and the superexploitation of women as "the sins and failures of feminism" and that this is an old misogynist manoeuvre of propagandistic scapegoating women that goes back to the early 18th century in England?<br /><br />I have already said it. <br /><br />If you disagree then how can you explain the presence of the word "Feminism" in this sentence?:<br /><br />"Feminism is not wrong to see the economic autonomy of women as central to their political and social freedom, but we do a disservice to its aims if we believe that it is enough to have a job, regardless of what it is."<br /><br />What does "feminism" have to do with you/those who believe it is enough that you/they have a job regardless of what it is? How are you "doing a disservice" to the "aims" of "feminism" by believing this (or anything)?Qlipothhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17343878659776948134noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18174466.post-67041226269854762862010-08-12T05:37:16.274-07:002010-08-12T05:37:16.274-07:00And is the point you are going to identify here va...And is the point you are going to identify here valid?Qlipothhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17343878659776948134noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18174466.post-25316899952106886872010-08-12T05:33:07.124-07:002010-08-12T05:33:07.124-07:00"I see the danger, but then I always thought ..."I see the danger, but then I always thought that the point being made was a different one – an argument within feminism about precisely what sort of progress has and hasn’t been made."<br /><br />Where and how in the post or the article do you see this point made?Qlipothhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17343878659776948134noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18174466.post-63461710328296733592010-08-11T19:02:06.306-07:002010-08-11T19:02:06.306-07:00-I think today right now we rather have a neoliber...-I think today right now we rather have a neoliberal ideology which likes the infinite protean nature of "the human"<br /><br />Point taken, but my take is that what that neolib ideology actually says is that we’ve arrived at the essence of a human society – this is what we ARE. It doesn’t help to try to say that what we ARE is something else than the neos say. Rather, as you say, this thing doesn’t work, it doesn’t meet concrete needs. But those needs don’t come to an end if they might give us a minimum wage or our own house or yacht. However rich ‘we’ get...<br /><br />-how but through patriarchal misogyny could the "consumerism" of the core in globalisation and the superexploitation of women be perceieved as a question to be framed as "the failure and sins of feminism"?<br /><br />Again, no way not to agree with that. The point of disagreement might arise if and when lefties are actually saying that.<br /><br />-The LT audience is not so well informed about socialist feminist critique that this misrepresentation can pass as something no one will believe anyway, that everyone will take as just "comradely" generosity. It is likely that some readers will be seriously disinformed and emerge from the encounter even more misogynist, even more convinced that women are feebleminded unprincipled egoists, than they were before these affirmations.<br /><br />I see the danger, but then I always thought that the point being made was a different one – an argument within feminism about precisely what sort of progress has and hasn’t been made.<br /><br />-In the mean time, 'Bill', address me with respect. I don't like you...And don't ever say 'Jeez' to me.<br /><br />You’ve broken my heart! We used to say ‘jeepers’ when i was young cos we knew we were going to hell if we said ‘jesus’ too many times (more than 7, I think). Maybe i should have tried Jeeeeeeeeezzzzzzzusssss!!!!! Respectfully, etc...Billhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02378852135619499306noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18174466.post-71690205236352027592010-08-06T21:11:20.652-07:002010-08-06T21:11:20.652-07:00That Judy Holliday movie is 'It Should Happen ...That Judy Holliday movie is 'It Should Happen to You', and the poster is Gladys Glover. One of her best, she's SO precious. Started off w/Comden and Green in the Revuers at the Village Vanguard.patrick j. mullinshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15909152556240137915noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18174466.post-19221514820571239332010-08-06T18:41:07.922-07:002010-08-06T18:41:07.922-07:00"and the guru herself just says be good, be k..."and the guru herself just says be good, be kind boyzengoils."<br /><br />Did you tell her what Spivak thought about such things? Somehow it's still hard envisioning you up a totally mindlessness-oriented place, where they might not have let you talk about The Ear of the Other all that much...an', an' the 'resort' aspects of the place sound almost like, I mean, y'know, the Pierre or sump'n (love that place, all champagne. I've just decided we'll do that this Xmas, go have a kir there in the Cafe. Have you ever been there? One of my favourite places in town.)patrick j. mullinshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15909152556240137915noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18174466.post-30792372793771496982010-08-06T15:00:45.876-07:002010-08-06T15:00:45.876-07:00Are most people really women? I didn't know it...Are most people really women? I didn't know it was a vast majority, anyway I knew they live longer.patrick j. mullinshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15909152556240137915noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18174466.post-48344836709938753182010-08-06T14:57:55.628-07:002010-08-06T14:57:55.628-07:00This comment has been removed by the author.patrick j. mullinshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15909152556240137915noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18174466.post-13167061224921442742010-08-06T14:34:22.650-07:002010-08-06T14:34:22.650-07:00patrick i was just joking - like now i can tell yo...patrick i was just joking - like now i can tell you must be serious because the topic is castration.<br /><br />yukity yuk; not funny okay. it's a long hard headachey day for me.<br /><br />it seems to me bill is sincere and bringing up topics of interest, why be angry?<br /><br />most people are women, patrick! so it's a bit annoying to be treated as eccentric on account of femality.Qlipothhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17343878659776948134noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18174466.post-13088107276338175342010-08-06T12:44:06.993-07:002010-08-06T12:44:06.993-07:00This comment has been removed by the author.patrick j. mullinshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15909152556240137915noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18174466.post-91363808480885447372010-08-06T12:29:16.800-07:002010-08-06T12:29:16.800-07:00This comment has been removed by the author.patrick j. mullinshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15909152556240137915noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18174466.post-85051270056427126992010-08-06T09:11:10.173-07:002010-08-06T09:11:10.173-07:00Then freaked out and came right back and went to L...Then freaked out and came right back and went to Lutece and got "drunk, I bet, smoked a whole pack of ciggies in one night, because Ms. Mayi wouldn't let you smoke nor drink, I bet."<br /><br />had to walk all the way off the grounds to smoke and did so only twice. and after I went actually to a very good resto in Athens, NY called Stewart House.Qlipothhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17343878659776948134noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18174466.post-41788703436291035232010-08-06T09:08:56.624-07:002010-08-06T09:08:56.624-07:00patrick i can't tell if you're even seriou...patrick i can't tell if you're even serious.<br /><br />"I'm going back to Badiou and white male supremacy, because you and Anodyne both just want to castrate all men, not just Rush Limbaugh."<br /><br />oh oh oh, now i can tell.Qlipothhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17343878659776948134noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18174466.post-57474685919712670552010-08-06T09:04:21.159-07:002010-08-06T09:04:21.159-07:00This comment has been removed by the author.patrick j. mullinshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15909152556240137915noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18174466.post-50732916607337641072010-08-06T09:04:07.894-07:002010-08-06T09:04:07.894-07:00This comment has been removed by the author.patrick j. mullinshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15909152556240137915noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18174466.post-16904209586104841492010-08-06T06:57:17.797-07:002010-08-06T06:57:17.797-07:00I mean I concede that finally Chomsky's way of...I mean I concede that finally Chomsky's way of concieveing "human nature" partakes of the classic liberal ideological conception of the individual, although i think there is much misreading of his relation to this via a mind/body or mind/matter or spirit/matter dualism that his reactionary and pomo critics read in which he has simply dismissed utterly but which they cannot rid themselves of. But say even if you don't misread, there are issues here. This is not the same kind of propagandistic assault on history and rationality constituted by, for example, Lenin's claim that "socialist feminist critique" is represented at its surgical best by that imbecile incoherent bit of self-promotion plus neolib propaganda in the Guardian. The LT audience is not so well informed about socialist feminist critique that this misrepresentation can pass as something no one will believe anyway, that everyone will take as just "comradely" generosity. It is likely that some readers will be seriously disinformed and emerge from the encounter even more misogynist, even more convinced that women are feebleminded unprincipled egoists, than they were before these affirmations.Qlipothhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17343878659776948134noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18174466.post-31726555698561604572010-08-06T06:42:38.114-07:002010-08-06T06:42:38.114-07:00Just to be really clear here, Bill - I think there...Just to be really clear here, Bill - I think there are legitimate debates obviously about defining our species as subjects, creative producers of ourselves, what we have in common, how to think about our capacities and needs, but this is seperate from the "universalism" of Zizek, Power, Toscano, whose main product is white male supremacist historical revisionism - the attempts to reinstate as mainstream the patriarchal white supremacist history taken for granted by generations of white men since Kant and Hegel, the efforts to reinstate these bogus fallacious works and thinkers as Authorities and enforce their Authority through every tactic including purging of the historical record, spurious revisionism, race baiting and contemptuous mockery in age-old racist and misogynist traditions. This is a degraded kind of discourse that is not really part of the legimate issues you raise regarding chomsky's naturalism as possibly (probably) sustaining certain ideological frames about what the arrangements of property and power in human affairs ought to be and risks linking up with idiotic evopsych and all that shit.Qlipothhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17343878659776948134noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18174466.post-69918893039884750442010-08-06T05:26:08.033-07:002010-08-06T05:26:08.033-07:00"Arpege, my friend Sheila told me to go see g..."Arpege, my friend Sheila told me to go see gurumayi sometime in the early 90s, she was always doing these retreat things."<br /><br />It's actually very nice there. Relaxing, you get this great veggie mlunch for five bucks, nobody bothers you for money, you can walk around, then go and chant. then there are the expensive weekends and stuff, more than the equivalent at a nice resort, because you get shaktipat included - but it's very nice. there's a division where the devotees do all the promising of magical good results and the guru herself just says be good, be kind boyzengoils.Qlipothhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17343878659776948134noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18174466.post-40030047484227257122010-08-06T04:44:46.648-07:002010-08-06T04:44:46.648-07:00I mean, alongside "the human is infinitely fl...I mean, alongside "the human is infinitely flexible" thing, we do get corporate personhood etc, the usurpation of the human (as subject of rights) by capital. An abstraction is offered in place of the concrete - humanity whose individual members live forever replaces the concrete humanity whose individual members live less than 100 years - and of course abstyractions are easily shuffled, there's no real obstacle to "the human" in "human rights" being identified as blocks of immortal capital. (through also a slippage or kind of trap door thing created between the individual and the species).<br /><br />The neoPlatonist, Pauline christian "universalism" that its vendors are specifically promoting against "postcolonial" thought, "pluriversality", Spivakian adaptations of deconstruction, feminism, and non- or less- Hegelian Marxism deploys a strategy even more like Israel's "facts on the ground". A patriarchal capitalist ruling class can organise the oppression of women and coopt the discourses of our resistance and then "critique" us for those very artifacts it produces with what of ours it has expropriated, vitiated, commodified and now sells back to us.<br /><br />this "universalism" one notices is - not arbitrarily - very popular with the young and ignorant. Because it is anti-wisdom. Over the past fifty years, the left has been able to share its knowledges globally, communism and the women's movement, the civil rights movement, and anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism and aided by telecom technologies. "Feminism" and "black nationalism" and "liberation theology" and "Marxism" also name traditions that are the repository of a lot of collected wisdom. This sood- universalism peddled by badiou and zizek is all about revelation - instant enlightenment for the innocent and open of heart, with these simply formulae. The pantomime is of these Paul Bremers, crowning themselves amidst the explosions and rubble, writing memos to redesign political traditions that they know nothing of, giving instructions to movements they never even joined let alone were chosen to lead, simply to exploit the targets for their own gain. That right to work piece in the guardian was like the billboard judy holiday buys in that movie where she just wants to promote her name. here's another by the same author -<br /><br />http://www.alternet.org/vision/147491/10_things_that_feminism_could_do_better/<br /><br />wtf? is this a message in a bottle ? <br /><br /><b>MEMO <br />From: Nina, at the beach <br />To: Feminism, Earth<br /><br /><br />Girls, I just finished watching you go wild again and here are some of my thoughts....</b><br /><br /><br />just vacuous, purposeless groundless scolding, also incoherent; there's no reason for this except for self-promotion, to somehow present herself as advisor. This is the technique of perky strivers everywhere - tv networks have low level development people writing memos like this to veteran writers whose scripts they have not even understood. Young perky ambitious PR pros write memos to directors listing the ten things their colleagues whose jobs they covet could do better, and for less money! Once upon a time the production of left political journalism had too many genuine militants and too few rewards to produce this sort of character, but with the internet it's become a valuable culture industry niche, and there she is, the one who leans over peter gallagher's shoulder in The Player and says "i really want to be one of your soldiers on this."Qlipothhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17343878659776948134noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18174466.post-24483873561939580872010-08-06T03:33:44.521-07:002010-08-06T03:33:44.521-07:00I think Bill that in fact this "soooduniversa...I think Bill that in fact this "soooduniversalism" that is the guise of the latest bourgeois reaction against Marxism in elite circles of the culture industry (led by US academia) is really dangerous, if you take a view just over the next decade. This is what is here now to destroy the accomplishments of the radical cultural politics which have been on the defensive but still fighting away throughout postmodernism. And postmodernism is a reaction that anyone can see contained some concessions - these cooptations such as the abolition the "human" one way or another. Now that postmodernism has performed these concessions, followed by cooptations with deploy an extremism to absurd degrees, now that the multiversality that is already present in Marxism and reasserted in new postmodern vocabularies is coopted and transformed into absurdity, this white supremacism can return and assume a dominant position. It is much like the neoliberal style of aggression all other things - one cannot micromanage the world, one can't stabilise an unstable financial system or rule the world despotically controlling every person. but one can destroy and create chaos for which one is ready, and reduce everyone else to helplessness and insecurity. <br /><br />Here we have this white supremacy that excuses itself for rehashing endlessly the old canards by saying it is only recognising "the racist Imaginary" and Ideology that already exists. It is only being honest about what's there. This argument is similar to that advanced from the same quarters about why the US occupation of Afghanistan must be sustained.Qlipothhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17343878659776948134noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18174466.post-39002161900652804392010-08-06T03:19:19.722-07:002010-08-06T03:19:19.722-07:00should say
"This "universalism", w...should say<br /><br />"This "universalism", which identifies "consumerism" and "seperatism-particularism" as the sins of women, is precisely not about the recongition of real human capacities and needs, and championing those subjects in their struggle against exploitation, but of "critiques" of normativity and proposals for the moral improvement of the most privileged people."Qlipothhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17343878659776948134noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18174466.post-13618330433401929122010-08-06T03:12:45.422-07:002010-08-06T03:12:45.422-07:00Hey bill - fair points.
Honestly though, I only m...Hey bill - fair points.<br /><br />Honestly though, I only mean to be remorseless when something is turned to propaganda purposes having what all reasonable people can see are real effect.<br /><br />The universalism which identifies "reverse racism" theme, for example, that Alberto Toscano plays in his assertions about Malcolm X, is resurgent and odious and affecting people:<br /><br />http://www.facebook.com/timjwise#!/notes/tim-wise/of-loaded-footnotes-and-lying-pundits-deceptive-data-and-the-attack-on-racial-eq/413103989503<br /><br />http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resignation_of_Shirley_Sherrod<br /><br />does " the idea that biology might pose, however minimally, an end point in human history isn’t similarly exposed for what it is?"<br /><br />do the same? I think it's a mixed bag. I think today right now we rather have a neoliberal ideology which likes the infinite protean nature of "the human" - which likes this abraction and this utopian technological progressivism implied and how easily it allows one to dismiss contemptuously the concrete needs of existing humanity, to dismiss that that are not being met, that they could be met. And then one goes off into the improving humanity before we can have (before we can deserve) communusm. With the infinitely flexible humanity comes an indifference to concrete humanity's concrete needs, like shelter, water, companionship, justice.<br /><br />the universalism i object to is bogus and a disguise for white supremacy (how but through white supremacy could Malcolm X' post-hajj politics be fantasisied as "a break with black nationalism"? how but through patriarchal misogyny could the "consumerism" of the core in globalisation and the superexploitation of women be perceieved as a question to be framed as "the failure and sins of feminism"? The ongoing catatrophe in Haiti is the story of ongoing imperialism not "the sins and complicity of anti-imperialism" and the story of ongoing super exploitation of working women is the story of patriarchal capitalism not "the failure and complicity of feminism".)...<br /><br />This "universalism", whihc identifies "consumerism" and "seperatisparticularism" the sin of women, is precisely not about the recongition and real human capacities and needs and championing those who revolt against exploitation, but of "critiques" of normativity and proposals for the more improvement of the most privileged people.Qlipothhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17343878659776948134noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18174466.post-81703747033577578262010-08-05T18:55:21.767-07:002010-08-05T18:55:21.767-07:00"So I'd like to hear then precisely how b..."So I'd like to hear then precisely how biology (or 'nature' in general) imposes constraints on human behaviour"<br /><br />That's what you wrote, I just did a riff, what you write I do not consider Holy Scripture. I'll play with it any way I choose, since you're writing such shit as 'living forever' (although you may have wanted to get off that one as too trivial, after all even the ones with the 'real science' and know Bill Gates think 5000 years is enough). <br /><br />"the idea that biology might pose, however minimally, an end point in human history isn’t similarly exposed for what it is? I’m not just trying to bark either."<br /><br />You mean it's a hoax, all that biology? Well, that's a little hard to swallow, given that you want the human being to live forever, and therefore there can be no biological constraints, but the 'biology' is also a hoax, so humanity can go ahead without biology. Arpege, if you would be so kind, would you tell me what VALUE this kind of shit talk has? Obviously, the perp here is going to croak himself (the sooner the better, one imagines) and is a thanatophobe, so is probably going to spend her savings on cryonautism or something, so she can be revived and 'de-biologized' to live forever. <br /><br />Okay, Arpege, I would like to know why this is not barren shit talk. In the mean time, 'Bill', address me with respect. I don't like you, and I don't know why Arpege is even talking to you. You're bullshitting and we both know it. And don't ever say 'Jeez' to me. It reminds me of many loathsome people besides yourself.patrick j. mullinshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15909152556240137915noreply@blogger.com