The Subject line could also be, Back to Nike and Microsoft
Timework Web wrote:
> Doug Henwood wrote,
>
> Furthermore, (and this speaks to Doyle
> Saylor's comment also) I see nothing remotely emancipatory in the above
> passages' exhaltation of "psychotic" as something which "keeps us intact
> and autonomous". For that matter, obsessive-compulsive disorder refers to
> dysfunctional symptoms, not to an identity. Whatever. One of Klein's
> themes is the cul-de-sac of identity politics. Get over it.
Doyle may be completely wrong, and his argument could perhaps be more
precisely stated -- but that argument has no more to do with identity politics
than would a post objecting to the use of "chick" or "darkie." I too reject
identity politics out of hand -- they are a refuge from serious political
struggle.
But the *label* "identity politics" has *also* been used (as has the charge of
"political correctness") as a refuge from serious political struggle. The main
point about obsessive-compulsive disorder is *precisely* Tom's point,
that it is a set of symptoms, not an identity. Doyle's argument is that Tom,
by using them metaphorically, is in fact contributing the general *social*
tendency to treat mental disorders as identities.
But in any case that is not my point here. My point is that the metaphor
is a very bad one indeed from the viewpoint of understanding social
reality and the expression of that reality in ideology and culture. I believe
Klein and Tom are both exemplifying what Marx condemned in the
third thesis on Feuerbach, they are dividing society (humans) into two
categories, one very small category including eminently themselves, and
one very large category, those mentally ill people who buy Nike shoes.
I am arguing that the behavior of consumers is much better understood
if a serious effort is made to see that behavior as rational behavior,
*however* irrational its positive results may be. I am also arguing that
if you want to understand the attraction of the brand name Nike you
must compare Nike's shoes to Morton Salt, not to Microsoft Windows.
Klein and Tom both see society as a collection of otherwise independent
("dotlike" in Marx's words) isolated inviduals, and that social relations
can be reduced to the behavior of individuals. This is false.
Carrol
