I don't see what the problem is. Biological characteristics that have no inherent
social meaning have been assigned social significance that has come to be
perceived as somehow natural, and is the basis for social inequality. The
biological characteristics chosen--anatomical traits, skin color, whatever--are
arbitrary. So while these traits themselves are biological, their utilization in
defining social categories of gender and race is social construction. I don't see
what is "postmodern" about this, as Chang points out in his essays in RRPE special
issue on race and class 1987(?), Marx analyzed this general phenomenon
explicitly. If it is postmodernism then there is nothing wrong with this part of
it, at least. Authors who emphasize the social construction aspect are trying to
break down the deeply held belief that what is social is natural, and therefore
must be accepted without question, cannot be changed. That's an important
project, and a very marxian one.
Is the anecdote about the dissertation defense supposed to convince us that
support for affirmative action ("taking race into account") is tantamount to
supporting apartheid? Institutions cannot consider the history of
institutionalized racism and patriarchy?
Mat
Louis Proyect wrote:
> Dennis Redmond:
> > If Butler
> >claimed to speak for the people on the Rez, then you could slam her for
> >yakking away. But she's not.
>
> Dennis, but she does so implicitly. As the Lingua Franca article points
> out, and as Doug has stressed repeatedly, Butler is trying to define a new
> political approach to race and gender. She says that "race" and "sex" are
> social constructions. Perhaps, it might be useful to show how Marxist
> Barbara Epstein viewed the Butlerite challenge in this excerpt from an
> October 1996 Z Magazine issue:
>
> ---
> In my experience postmodernism in practice, as it functions in conferences,
> seminars, public talks, it is more ideologically driven, less restrained by
> standards of logic, let alone correspondence to reality, than postmodernism
> in print. A number of years ago I taught a seminar in which the students
> read chapters from Judith Butler's Gender Trouble, which argues that the
> concept "woman" is essentialist, and that sexual difference is socially
> constructed. During the discussion I argued that there are biological
> differences between men and women, and that while gender is constructed in
> a myriad of ways in different social settings, there remains a fundamental
> biological difference between men and women, with important social
> consequences. The students were shocked: they pointed out that enemies of
> feminism point to differences between men and women. My agreement that such
> differences exist seemed to place my feminism in question. One student
> argued that not only sexual difference but bodies are socially constructed.
> His stake in this view, he said, was that if he were to believe that he had
> a body that was given rather than constructed through discourse, that would
> make him a white male, and give him a set of politics that he did not want.
> I asked if he could not be a white male but define his own politics; my
> remark was ignored.
>
> A second student accused the first of speaking from a position of privilege
> as a white male. Other students began accusing each other of various
> ideological errors. I interrupted to suggest that we should all try to
> treat each other with respect, that everyone should be able to say what he
> or she thought without fear of being attacked. One student expressed
> general agreement with this, but said that some ideas were so hurtful that
> they should be ruled out of public discussion. When I asked what ideas the
> student had in mind, I was told: my view that there are innate biological
> differences between men and women. I later found out that the chair of my
> department received a complaint that I had expressed this apparently
> offensive view in class. The chair sensibly advised the complaining student
> to discuss the issue with me.
>
> It is of course true, as one student pointed out in the course of the
> discussion, that there are some people who are born with sexual
> characteristics that do not fit male or female categories, and some people
> who do not identify with the sex with which they are born. But this does
> not imply that the distinction between male and female is discursively
> constructed rather than biologically based, or that the categories are
> invalid, but rather that there are people who do not fit these categories
> or whose self-image differs from their biology. It is useful to consider
> how these exceptions should affect our thinking about sex. Such discussion
> cannot take place when ideological denunciation replaces thoughtful
> exchange, or when consideration of non-discursive reality is ruled out.
> Postmodernism asserts that there is no such thing as truth, and it does
> sometimes seem that participation in postmodernist discussion requires
> shutting down the part of one's mind that asks whether a view accords with
> reality, whether it makes sense or not. An acquaintance of mine, who
> teaches in a major East Coast university, described the doctoral defense of
> a candidate who had written a dissertation on the treatment of race in the
> law. The student criticized existing law for failing to take race (or
> gender, or sexual orientation) into account, for treating blacks and
> whites, women and men, homosexuals and heterosexuals, as equal before the
> law. He cited as an example the following: several black teenagers had seen
> a film in which a black man was beaten by a group of racist whites. They
> were standing on the sidewalk together discussing their anger at racism,
> and at whites, when one of them pointed out a white teenage boy walking
> down the other side of the street. Several of them ran across the street
> and beat the white boy, who sustained permanent brain damage. This was
> designated a hate crime by the court. The student objected to this
> designation: in treating black violence toward a white as the equivalent of
> white violence toward a black, he argued, it disregarded racism. The
> faculty at the exam, other than my acquaintance, applauded this view. My
> acquaintance asked the student, and the other faculty, what legal system
> they could imagine that would distinguish between people on the basis of
> race (or gender, or sexual orientation) and yet remain fair. The student
> and the other faculty at first seemed taken aback by the question. But
> after a minute one of the faculty members said, "No, that's the wrong
> question. It's not our job to make proposals; we're critical theorists. Our
> job is to criticize prevailing assumptions." The student and the other
> faculty seemed relieved, and the exam proceeded as if the question had been
> answered. My acquaintance was appalled. She considered asking whether the
> others present believed in apartheid. She considered refusing to concur in
> a passing grade. But she realized that the student would be the main victim
> of her protest, which really should be directed toward the other faculty.
> The student was given high marks for the exam; my acquaintance did not object.
>
> Postmodernism has become an enclosed universe, not only largely indifferent
> to other perspectives but also largely uninterested in learning more about
> the world or (despite its protestations of radicalism) engaging with
> society so as to change it. I have come to see the world of postmodernism
> as a bubble, a place where intellectuals can take refuge from a
> disappointing world and reassure themselves that the intellect is
> all-powerful. Over the last twenty years the right has grown enormously in
> numbers, political power, and popular influence. In the fifties there was
> an explicit attack on the left; this included an attack on left academics,
> many of whom lost their jobs. In the eighties and nineties there has not
> been any concerted attack on the left comparable to McCarthyism.
> Nevertheless the left has dwindled to the point where it is not clear what
> the term refers to.
>
> Meanwhile academia, especially the humanities and to a lesser extent the
> social sciences, have lost prestige, influence, and funding. The logic of
> the marketplace, never altogether foreign to the academy, invades it an
> accelerating pace. Postmodernism appears to transcend the devaluation of
> humanist intellectuals by creating its own elite. It redefines radicalism
> as cultural marginality, which is much easier to achieve than social
> change. As it becomes increasingly difficult to exert political influence,
> postmodern cultural studies asserts that "everything is political":
> graffiti is political, writing obscure articles is political, presumably,
> brushing one's teeth is political. It is hard not to see postmodernism as
> simultaneous pursuit and denial of social irrelevance.
>
> Louis Proyect
> (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
