- Suburbanization has soul-atrophying effects: fatigure from long commutes, sterile relationships, large houses and too many opportunities to waste time, and lack of grassroots community.
- I see the waning of affect, and the inability to live with meaning and give form to lasting or new connections as endemic in this society.
- A constant feeling of insecurity and a `generalized loss of solidarity` grips me - prevents me from having the confidence to take a risk (F. Berardi).
- A tragic perspective is definitely needed - remaining immanent, but not positivist: we cannot fully know the world, in a timeless formal way, or in an essential way. We cannot use this to predict the future: we can project what might occur, but without the certainty of knowing our struggle must result in an ideal world. Realizing that oppression cannot be finally eliminated, but not resigning ourselves to this fact nor justifying it in any way, gets us outside the optimism vs. pessimism way of thinking. Tragic perspectives are not nihilistic - as Professor Cornel West argues, they are profoundly hopeful, yet pragmatic and ethical in seeking freedom.
- I am committed to anti-oppression analysis more than some Marxists in the world, but I do not see all instances of skill, self-expression, and personal development as oppressive. I see oppression as systemic, but not as a closed system, or as a totality in which all instances of skill, self-expression, and personal development would necessarily reproduce domination. For example, while men may possess particular skills which reinforce their domination over women, it would be less accurate to say the totality of their experience is somehow so corrupt that the shape of those abilities, or the process of skill-formation, cannot be recaptured and put to more liberating uses. In the desire to remove `privilege` and to distrust any productive forms of power, I see aspects of the death drive - pure negation. I see an abstract or mystical idea of life projected which does not address the practicalities of getting things done, nor the benefits in terms of standards of living, quality of life, and the difficult development of experience and affect (community). Humans have needs, which are not simply socially constructed by oppressive power relations: they are in flux and changing (as open systems) but nevertheless they are real and need to be addressed as such, independent of critiques of human nature myths. Nurture doesn`t trump nature, it`s just that humans are not naturally oppressive toward one another. And the development of nature is far more extensive than pure immediacy or bare life - ironically what it seems pure social constructionists would like to turn to. Our affects carry experiences forming multi-layered worlds, assemblages of skill as well as guides for experimentation for new forms of culture and social relations. That doesn`t mean we can just polemically embody pure feeling in opposition to, rather than in harmony with, reason (of a more substantial variety).
- Foucaults point in comparing class war and race struggle discourses is not that class conflict does not exist, but that Marxism itself gave rise to the friend-enemy distinction underlying the identity politics paradigm that many Marxists (rightly, I think) reject.
- I`m having trouble being an ally, questioning what that means. If I cannot not act oppressively, then I don`t see how can I be part of the solution, and I don`t see how it is possible without a larger social effort. I`m not on board with abolishing masculinity: that goes beyond `checking my privilege` and positions me as an impossible ally. It`s a very immature way of dealing with the power imbalances, with simple friend-enemy distinctions. We can transform aspects of masculinity, but I thought that patriarchy was the source of oppressive masculinity, as well as many of the aspects of femininity that some more radical (not socialist) feminists valorize. Here`s the thing: insofar as a man does not overtly act oppressively, within the system we live in, he will passively acquire advantages. By theorizing closed system, you see everything as contributing to reinforcing patriarchy - thus making it very discouraging for men who try to be allies to the feminist movement. This isn`t about assigning moral blame based on intentions: it`s about recognizing good and bad examples.
- Escaping from emotions and bodily feelings by chattering and externalizing is a neurotic way of living, something I don`t hope for, but not something I would criticize to the point to stigma or depression over - because that would only reinforce the neurotic condition itself.
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