Points missed
When I first inveighed against the QRAC restrictions I noted that the conservative critiques of the restrictions are pointless because they conjure up a phantasm of ‘equality’ which conservatives don’t believe in in the first place. Instead, criticizing the women’s-only hours ought to stem from a left critique of the place that religion and identity have in a modern society whose twin organizing commitments ought to be the self and the universality.
Unfortunately, with a post over at the resurrected Cambridge Common, it seems like the cheap and pointless binary is going to hold up. On the one hand, we have conservatives whose opposition stems from a thinly-disguised belief in the rights of the ruling class. On the other hand, we have the identity “left”1 anti-critique which chastises the powerful for their refusal to hew from their own interests. As a consequence, we have a feedback loop, with both sides relying on the spectre of the other in order to produce their own ideological consistency.
As I said before, I’ve never been to the QRAC, and I’m not losing a single privilege in its closure to men. What we are losing is a commitment to the universalization project of modern society—a project which ought to be fundamental to ‘progressive’ politics.
1 I refuse to label identity politics as truly left.
9 responses so far
Haha, I like the comment-box prompt: “But perhaps you disagree.”
Indeed, I do.
I’d like to hear more about your ideas on the “twin organizing commitments [of] the self and the universality.” The idea that the “self,” a coherent individual, is the fundamental agential unit of humanity is so historically specific and culturally contested (including within Western culture) that it seems to contradict the ideal of universality. You can’t have it both ways. Unless what you mean by ‘universality’ is ‘everyone thinks like me, a traditional Enlightenment rationalist.’
The destructive assertion that identity politics distracts from the ‘real’ Leftist critique based on “universal” (read: “white male”) experience has plagued labor and New Left politics for soooo long and been critiqued six ways from Wednesday. It’s also blighted identity-based groups themselves, from black nationalist men relegating women to secondary roles, to white heterofeminists distancing themselves from queer and trans women. Again, this is old news. What’s with the anachronisms?
What I don’t get is, your comment on Lucy’s column seems to agree with identity politics pluralism: you say we should “live in harmony with one another despite our differences and not live by what ‘the majority’ thinks is right.” How does this square with your disdain for ‘tribalism?’
Thanks in advance for elaborating!
There’s a lot of claims made there, but not a lot of substance. One thing I think is the most fundamentally wrong is this:
Why would I read ‘white male’ in to ‘universal’? Because you do? When I talk about the self and the universality, what I mean is that those are the only two legitimate organizing spheres of association in modern society. That’s not to say we’ll never have other forms of association—to gender, race, nationality, or whatnot—but that we have to keep those filial associations oriented against the site of total individualism (self) and the site of least individualism (universality).
There’s a difference between majority-rule and universal-rule. Majority rule implies that the minority makes sacrifices; universal-rule implies that all make sacrifices. As a white male, it is absolutely my responsibility to stay conscious of my latent prejudices and work to eliminate them, and it is my responsibility to act sometimes deliberately against my pragmatic self-interest. Just the same, it is the responsibility of Muslim women to sacrifice their own first-order feelings (a need to wear headscarves in gyms) in order to produce a willful, transcendent integration into modern society.
Guhhh … that’s stronger than what I meant to say. What I meant was, there’s a lot of claims made there, but not a lot of corollary arguments to back those claims up.
Muslim women have to integrate into modern society? Why can’t modernity (a fluid concept) be Muslim? Is it always Christian/secular-Christian?
Modern society should be Muslim in the sense that it should celebrate and incorporate its symbols and meanings into a larger whole, but never in the sense that it endorses any of its incontestable prescriptions or proscriptions. Modern society should not be Muslim for exactly the same reason that it should not be Christian, should not be White-male, should not be Propertied-class.
First of all, do you seriously think that Muslims don’t contest the wearing of veils within their own faith communities?
Secondly, if you want to eradicate the “prescriptions and proscriptions” of all religious doctrine and wisdom traditions, leaving only their symbolic shells (which I think is pretty much impossible, let alone desirable) then you should at least be consistent and go after Christian doctrine. Mulsims in the U.S. can worry about ‘transcending into modernity’ once marriage is completely erased, weekends shift to Tuesdays and Wednesdays, all forms of masturbation and consensual sex are celebrated as morally good, alcohol consumption is legal at all ages, etc.
Well, since I agree with you in spirit on essentially all of those (with certain complications), then I suppose we can agree that Muslims too should be asked to make a transcendent, conscious choice to join modern society.
What I don’t understand is the analytical framework which sees politics of distinction and segregation as good when they assert the rights of a class which is in the minority, but bad when they assert the rights of those in the majority. They’re bad in both cases.
How do you feel about affirmative action?
I support affirmative action insofar as it accumulates in real indicators of social and economic underprivilege and attempts to equalize against them. When affirmative action works on a ‘mere’ diversity, level, though, it fails: it’s absurd to think that a wealthy, Groton-educated, admissions-counseled African-American ought to be offered an admissions bonus. It’s obviously impossible to determine exactly, in mathematical terms, just how much handicap different students have when coming to the admissions game. But there are far more accurate ways of determining it than via second-order cultural patterns.