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Give me a long enough feminist lever and I will move the world?

  
 
Tom Coates
22:09 / 16.04.02
I was having a conversation with a old University friend the other day and one of the things he started to argue was that the 'problem' with queer theory, feminism and the like was that they took an identity or an issue and operated as if you could reconfigure the world in the image of that identity. Or that you could describe everying in terms of it. I'm bastardising a bit here. But I think the essence of the argument was that Cultural Studies people tend towards a perspectival view of the world and of the value of philosophy which must inevitably compromise their ability to explicate.

Is this true? i thought not - I thought the philosophies that arise tended to take a site of conflict and exercise a political problematisation that was based on larger philosophical principles. I argued that any intellectual exercise requires a statement of intent - a question to ask - a goal to strive for. And that Queer theory used more general philosophical tools for a particular group of individuals with a very clear political strategy - but which was based around the examination of wider, larger, philosophical issues...
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
08:28 / 17.04.02
I would suggest that a supplementary question appearing from this would concern whether the dichotomy being drawn by Tom's friend is between "objective" non-queer/feminist/race-driven philosophies and "subjective" queer/feminist/race-driven philosophies, and how a philosophy can claim "objectivity" in the first place. Doesn't *every* philosophy by definition attempt to reorder the world in the terms of its conception?
 
 
gozer the destructor
08:58 / 17.04.02
firstly can someone briefly summarise queer theory, my knowledge of foucalt is scant at best.

the subjective/objective debate in philosophy, hmmm, i'd be temted to agree with haus there but even freud said sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, so there are exceptions within systems, or it is possible to be objective whilst using a subjective methodology.

I would like to hope so...
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
09:19 / 17.04.02
Not wishing to sound picky, but:

I think it's true that people arguing from such positions will often conceptualise the whole world on that basis, and reject interpretations which could be said to run parallel. I doubt that it's fair to say that the ideas themselves inherently possess this quality.
 
 
Loomis
09:49 / 17.04.02
I'd say that the original motivation for philosophy was to discover/understand the essential nature of reality, to reveal this order and find categories and definitions of everything, like in Aristotle, who was pretty much the major influence on the Western tradition of thinking through most of the last 2 thousand years.

They thought they were uncovering the "real" world, rather than purposely "attempting to redefine the world in terms of their conception" but they were unaware that the latter was in fact what they were doing. This became clear in the twentieth century with the focus on sociological/psychological models which reveal the assumptions involved in all thought. Thus we learn that you cannot move the world with your lever in the way you might have thought you could, because there is nowhere you can stand that is outside this world. We have terms like "always already" from Derrida, which attmept to encapsulate our inability to separate ourselves from the concept in order to know its "reality". Thus it might very well be (just thinking out loud here) that the ONLY kind of philosophy is purpose oriented, and that when this goal has been reached (eg when there is no more homophobia/sexism etc- next Tuesday afternoon I hear)then the theory will morph naturally into something else, but it would still be a theory of relations between changeable concepts rather than a definition of concepts.

Of course I know squat about queer theory- this is a kind of generalized "what kind of philosophy is possible" post.
 
 
The Planet of Sound
10:21 / 17.04.02
Marxists will tell you 'everything is about' the class struggle. Christians will say that 'everything' is about God. Salesman will tell you that 'everything in life' can be understood in terms of sales. The more stereotypical one is as a personality, the more narrow and obsessive one's worldview becomes, it seems.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
10:30 / 17.04.02
I think there's a certain amount of truth in that, which is one reason why good estate agents tend to make poor philosophers and worse dinner guests.

I would, however, question Loomis' inherent assumption that the function of queer/feminist philosophies is to obliterate homophobia/sexism. Could they not be seen as "isms", mechanisms for constructing a view of the world which bring out certain elements or offer certain perspectives? And, if so, how do they differ from the "accentless" view of the world that Tom's friend seems to be conflating with "objectivity"?
 
 
Loomis
11:04 / 17.04.02
I didn't mean to imply that queer theory/ feminism is intended to do away with homophobia/sexism. I meant to say that they attempt to reveal where these phobias and isms are an inherent part of other theories/assumptions/world views. Though I suspect that part of this aim is to illustrate how, once these assumptions have been removed, these phobias and isms will be reduced, as they will no longer be institutional. Obviously they will still be around, but not in the same way. I think that article in the barb zine said something like that. Something like- homophobia is a structural problem, though that does not excuse individual homophobics.
 
 
Cavatina
11:22 / 17.04.02
Posted by Tom:

"... the 'problem' with queer theory, feminism and the like was that they took an identity or an issue and operated as if you could reconfigure the world in the image of that identity. Or that you could describe everying in terms of it. I'm bastardising a bit here."

With all due respect, Tom, I think that you are.

As I understand it, Queer theory shouldn't be lumped with feminism(s). The latter term designates forms of identity politics, while queer theory argues for the confounding of identity. In constantly interrogating the pre-conditions of identity, it does not seek to be itself a stable identity category. And because of its ceaselessly sceptical stance, it does not produce emancipatory knowledge in the manner, say, of an identity-conscious gay or lesbian feminist politics.
 
 
Tom Coates
12:14 / 17.04.02
Sorry - I meant that I was bastardising my friend's position. I have a pretty fair understanding of the relationships between feminism and queer theory. Sorry for the confusion...
 
 
Goodness Gracious Meme
12:21 / 17.04.02
Grr, just lost a reply.

But basically, Cavatina's point is a good one, queer theory is not about validation or identity in the way that gay activism/advocacy is or can be. This is precisely why there's a lot of controversy about its value in gay communities, it's often seen as a turning away from more 'real' concerns to faff about with semantics.

Queer theory is about using the queering process as a filter through which to view the world, and then to see what happens, but is always self-interrogatory/reflexive, or should be. It doesn't or shouldn't set up a 'way to view the world' that obliterates all others, and I think it is a bastardising to suggest, as Nick seems to be, that this is the case.

Queer theory uses the mechanisms that take place within queering to interrogate other mechanisms of power exchange/interrelation/communication etc, not to compare them and find them wanting.

Also, contemporary feminism (or peharps more accurately, your comparison is with contemporary feminist thought/theory) is a very broad church, it's much accurate to talk about feminism(s). Eg at a lecture she gave recently, Judith Butler identified her work as belonging in a feminist tradition, but is obvsiously going to be working with 'queering' that tradition whilst taking from it. While on the other hand you'll get people like Seyla Benhabib who see feminism as being much closer to the identity-validating type of practice Tom seems to be making the comparison with. And it's important that feminism has spaces that are about interrogating the patriarchy and about approaching the world from various points of view that tend to associate with the 'female'.

(eg in light of feeling unable to respond to a racist comment (ranted about it in the conversation) because of suddenly feeling immensely conscious of being a smallish woman faced with a man, I think it's important that there is thought and activism that proceeds from a point of dealing with these situations as a woman.)
 
 
gozer the destructor
12:51 / 17.04.02
that's quite informative but is there a basic synopsis of quer theory as a thought?
 
 
Goodness Gracious Meme
12:54 / 17.04.02
where I say as a woman, I mean, as someone who is physically smaller than her adversary and who has been socialised away from being aggressive, etc, etc. .. ie i mean is from positions that arise from the crossing over of various characteristics, positions, statuses that arise from certain characteristics... This is also where feminism(s) and for example, post-colonialsim(s) have a lot to offer each other.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
13:43 / 17.04.02
Gozer - this is sketchy but a good place to start.
 
 
Dragonthief
14:32 / 17.04.02
Since I was that friend, I just wanted to say this: Tom, you KNOW I was talkin' bout yo Mama!

But seriously, Whilst I can't get too drawn into this right now (Boss on Patrol) I did want to clear up points.

I was certainly NOT suggesting that philosophy provides objectivity, which queer theory can't. I was saying that the converse is equally false: where philosophy fails as a critical tool, so must queer theory, feminism and the like.

Also, RE Hausman's statement: "Doesn't *every* philosophy by definition attempt to reorder the world in the terms of its conception?" ... No. *A* philosophy is a worked out, sytematic account/conception of ontological/epistemological principles, and would be susceptible to your point in many cases. However, *Philosophy* qua practice is more to do with good or bad reasoning. It is about the quality of the method by which statements are generated and defended. There is generally no superior indicator of good reasoning than the defensibility of statements yielded to intelligent hearers. One must depend on logical standards and, up to a point, substantively critical points of view. These two together are never critically indefeasible, and so are certainly not objective. Follow that thought and you can see why I believe that almost any statement that begins "Blah *is* or *ought*..." fails to be sufficiently compelling to be worth uttering for it's own sake, as if it were *knowledge* (My belief on this score is, I think, one reason why Tom hates me).

So: my simple objection to queer theory et al is this: it fails as a critical tool *whenever* its statements are presented as knowledge.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
15:11 / 17.04.02
But dragonthief - all you're doing there, surely, is identifying the naturalistic fallacy - which is good and noble, but is the only criterion for acceptance as "knowledge" the defensibility of a statement in the face of an intelligent criticism?
 
 
Dragonthief
15:20 / 17.04.02
The naturalistic fallacy is one way of incorrectly ascribing the status of knowledge to statements. It is not the only way. I work on the basis that, until proven otherwise, there *is no way* of correctly ascribing the status of knowledge to a statement. Not, that is, if by knowledge we understand some determination of the concepts truth, objectivity, proof etc.. My own view is that concepts like truth are misleading, and arise carelessly out of bad use. I'm all for abandoning them.

I still find Popper difficult to fault on that one. Verification is impossible, but we can have a damned good go at falsification... that is, testing theories and statements til they break. If they break, discard them. if they don't, then use them. The status of a well-tested-unfalsified (WTU?) statement is interesting, and itself cause of much philosophical speculation. It's fairly clear, though, that being a WTU does not make it *true* or *knowledge*.
 
 
Dragonthief
15:29 / 17.04.02
I should add, that the standards by which statements etc. can be tested are inevitably limited. Two things Popper says may help. (1) logical contradiction is not permitted. A statement may not say "X is the case" if a necessary premise of that statement requires that "not-X is the case". (2) Statements arise out of a system of organising ideas (call it theory): a good theory should contain within itself a description of the empirical observations, (and their intellectual equivalents: ask Habermas WTF they are!) which would render the theory false. It should, in other words, put its money where its mouth is and stick its neck out, submit to testing.

Of course, this makes it difficult to see how any theory that is not an empirical science might be usefully debated / tested. Which brings me back to the reason why I expressed doubts over the nature of the claims made by critical theorists (queer or otherwise).
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
15:46 / 17.04.02
But to dsescribe everything in terms of something (the accusation as it is represented by Tom above) is not to claim the capacity to create knowledge. One can, if one wishes, describe everything in terms of blue. This is blue. This is not blue. This is blue-ish. This is less blue than this thing, but more blue than this other thing. This may or may not be blue, but without light I cannot tell.

Or, to put another way, if your objection to queer theory et al is that it presents statements as knowledge, how is that different from objections to any other mechanism that is ultimately able to lay claim to factual correctness (in a way that queer theory, I suspect, actually does not, not to mention whether the multifarious feminisms could be considered as alia of queer theory}?
 
 
Dragonthief
16:16 / 17.04.02
My challenge to Tom was more along the lines of "what *is* queer theory? How does it work and what does it do? what is its strength and attraction?". It was his attempts to answer this that I attacked, because he *seemed* to be saying that it stood, critically, in a superior relation to understanding than other approaches. To be fair, we were both pretty pissed, and he was pre-occupied, too.

I revert to Popper. It is possible to proceed in "this is blue" way. Indeed, perhaps there is no alternative. The question is, how helpful is that? Why shouldn't I just substitute green for blue? What's to stop me? Unless you also mean that there are good reasons for using blue rather than green as a standard / descriptor, then there is no point in it?

My point is not so much that one should not present statements as knowledge: I think one *must* present statements as knowledge. My questions are directed at what it is we think we are doing then, and are we daft enough to *believe* that statements so presented really *are* knowledge. It is necessary to look at the grounds on which we are persuaded to prefer one theory over another. It introduces realism. It is necessary to consider exactly what the role of truth-claims (embedded or explicit) in discourse is. These things are important precisely because talk of truth and knowledge risk inhibiting cultural progress.

Forms of speculation, like queer theory, are useful in a sort of cultural / sociological way. They promulgate memes and effect changes at both individual and population levels. They have a catalysing function, you could say. If you like what they tend to promote, then all's well and good. Ideas are just the artillery of the mind. What is important is not that the meme be true, but that it be successful. It must demolish the opposition. Queer theory appeals to my sensibilities, so I will champion it (up to a point). It remains true, however, that intellectual and moral commitments are never logically indefeasible and so all truth-claims embedded in a statement (and without which a statement is pointless) are vulnerable. We should not get hung up on that. Argument is a sociological force because it is argument, not because it leads to wisdom.

Anyway... I gotta go home now, and I want a DRINK! (nice to meet you all. Esp. you, Hausman)
 
 
Tom Coates
14:04 / 18.04.02
And I repeat - queer theory and feminism persue initially political objectives designed (among other things) to undermine strict and traditional binaries of sexuality and gender by using philosophy from a post-structuralist and deconstructive tradition. In the process, they expect to uncover some interesting structures and formulations about the world and to reveal a certain degree of pervasiveness, but at no point do they take one binary and use it to explain the world. In fact quite the opposite. They take one binary and use it as their personally invested point of entry which helps them pry open others. The philosophy informs the political practice / theory. And then the political practice / theory feedback interesting insights which can inform the larger philosophical practice... Where you place your emphasis is a matter or individual opinion... Queer theory is not designed to understand reality - in fact it's not really even designed to understand sexuality. It's there to find and push the collapses, absences and spaces in sexuality - and by association, some of the collapses, absences and spaces of systems of knowledge, ideas of reality, morality, value etc...
 
 
Goodness Gracious Meme
14:19 / 18.04.02
Yes. And if I wanted to be annoying, Dragonthief, I might point out that the kind of rigidity you're setting up within your arguments is one of the things that approaches like queer theory seek to mess up and muddy.

Not *just* for the sake of it, but to uncover assumptions within the structures of the argument itself.
 
 
Dragonthief
12:38 / 19.04.02
I don't mean to be rigid. I'm just suggesting there is a bottom-line: meaningful discourse inevitably raises truth-claims (whatever those claims may be, and whatever truth-criteria are used - see! I'm flexible!). Any discourse that purports not to raise truth-claims is either wrong in that claim, or is in fact meaningless because it ceases to be about anything. However, truth-claims cannot be proved. This bind is, til now, impossible to get out of (ask Sartre: he went through conniptions trying to resolve it. As did Kant, Marx, and all the really interesting, clever thinkers from history).

That is the stick-in-the-mud position that I am taking, partly out of pessimism and partly as Devil's Advocate.

Tom wrote:
They take one binary and use it as their personally invested point of entry which helps them pry open others. The philosophy informs the political practice / theory. And then the political practice / theory feedback interesting insights which can inform the larger philosophical practice

What is 'prying' here? How do I pry open an alien point of view (perhaps yours) using a deconstruction of mine? As for the relation between theory and practice: SHEESH! Don't get me started. (Once upon a time I believed in the possibility of praxis).

As Tom knows, I am a trained analytical philosopher. Tom also knows that I left academia -and philosophy- at least partly because of frustrations with that model. But it remains the default position that is most easily defended and most dangerous to other approaches: it is the embodiment of the Principle of Doubt. Ironically, for all their talk of 'deconstruction' and iconoclastic schemes, most critical theorists I have ever read are in the business of constructing elaborate theoretical filigree that cracks when subjected to some basic logical points. Their attempts to get around these logical points generally result in an orgy of neologism and grammatical originality that gives me eye-ache.

That's the pessimistic view. I should, for honesty's sake, admit two things. (1) I want to be proved wrong, and (2) I should probably read more of that sort of stuff. (Though I just know it will all fail me)

Reading suggestions, people?
 
 
alas
19:11 / 19.04.02
I have a personal and under-read favorite called "Bodies and Pleasures: Foucault and the Politics of Sexual Normalization," by one Ladelle McWhorter, a Foucault apologist who uses a very readable, "teacherly" approach to Foucault to argue a couple of fronts: first, that following Foucault's thought does not imply a retreat to conservatism or political resignation or nihilism (as some critics have claimed), and that "the political impact of Foucault's work is most apparent not in his overt politcal claims, within the texts themselves, but, instead, at the site of the reader, in what happens between reader and texts." Her argument that there's a physical level to Foucault's work that is more important, in many ways, than the "intellectual" as it remains conceived under Cartesian dualism.

I'm not sure if I'm being clear, here; she's less interested in Foucault's texts for what they say than for what they do, how they work on a physical level.

She also argues for discipline in the service of pleasure, which I think is just brilliant.

And as to truth claims: I don't buy that to be successful any claim "must demolish the opposition," but I'm not naive about the need to claim and use political strategies that will not be loved by all comers. Yet more than one truth can exist at any given time.

McWhorter discusses truth claims at some length in her second chapter, entitled "Genealogical Diversions: Wherein the Ascetic Priestess Loses Her Way and Begins to Wander Aimlessly Through Dem Ole Cotton Fields Back Home" (she's got a bit of a sense of humor). She comes from a working-class Southern US background and uses her cousin Rory's checking account as an example for competing truth claims: he had an argument with the bank as to whether he had actually deposited money into his account, but for which he had no receipt. The bank's answer: if you have no receipt, the "truth" is that you did not deposit it. However, we all know that ain't necessarily so. And "the fact that the bank could produce more justification for its claim [regarding the balance of his account] than Rory could produce for his surely doesn't MAKE the bank's claim true. Justification INDICATES truth; it doesn't create it" (44). So it is not that truth is nonexistent but it is radically relative. And it certainly doesn't mean that all truth claims have equal validity. "... A proposition is true if and only if it arises in a discursive context in which it can be justified according to the justificatory ruels (or procedures and practices) of a given context and can therefore vary with context" (45).

If the teller remembers Rory coming in and depositing the money, but doesn't have a record of it, then--for the bank--the money isn't there. But for the teller, and for Rory, it is "really" there. (And, actually, it gets more complex; the real question at hand being more "what is the bank going to do" for Rory, rather than "what really happened?")

I'm interested in ethics however; I don't think McWhorter's discussion of ethics is completely satisfactory, although it is quite strong.

alas.
 
  
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