tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11122973.post113634526258926597..comments2024-02-08T05:04:18.484-08:00Comments on J'S THEATER: Fathoming U.S. Quasi-Fascism in 2006John Khttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08073378940347627766noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11122973.post-1136570841760838632006-01-06T10:07:00.000-08:002006-01-06T10:07:00.000-08:00Keguro, isn't it productive to misread Butler? LOL...Keguro, isn't it productive to misread Butler? LOL One point I'd take is: to what extent does the construction of the "desiring subject" who's the "addressee," at least in American terms, for example, depend upon the exclusion of racial/raced, ethnicized, gendered, etc. subjects? <BR/><BR/>I'm not sure I agree with the notion that the master's rape is justified as a function of the desiring African woman; isn't that the argument that the master would make? But what abou the African woman's argument, her location? Isn't her subjectivity and subject position elided in this formulation? Even if we account for a complexity of negoations, does that permit us this kind of conceptual slippage? Whose alibi? Certainly not the African woman's--is it?<BR/><BR/>I agree with you about Hughes; to what extent does his submerged queer subjectivity, his origins at the edges of the metropole, his racially mixed ancestry and cosmpolitanism, all factor into his appeal in that work? <BR/><BR/>Your points about McKay's poem and about political critiques are well taken. But I still wonder, is it an issue of who claims ownership or defaces, or rather, the socioopolitical structuration of those terms in and of themselves?<BR/><BR/>Why are quotations and parentheticals "lamentable"?John Khttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08073378940347627766noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11122973.post-1136496958046436172006-01-05T13:35:00.000-08:002006-01-05T13:35:00.000-08:00Kai, I'm fascinated by the way you've gendered thi...Kai, I'm fascinated by the way you've gendered this relationship in an essential sense, and the sort of domestic model you describe; I wonder what other people think about this. I agree that the black (battered) body or bodies are part of a complex societal relationship; these bodies, usually objectified but sometimes as--to follow Keguro--desiring subjects, are actually addressed and consulted, or at least the other, controlling body gives the appearance of doing so. It is strange and highly dysfunctional, if I can use that term. Very interesting.John Khttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08073378940347627766noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11122973.post-1136469606923024062006-01-05T06:00:00.000-08:002006-01-05T06:00:00.000-08:00I sometimes think of America, in the political int...I sometimes think of America, in the political interrelation of its black and white populations, as an interracial couple. A white man and a black (battered) woman. We, she, is not the enemy, exactly, although there are times when to look at us, her, your wouldn't know it; and sometimes, in certain respects, she, we can be quite close to power or limitedly powerful in our own right (always subject to, contingent upon the husband). And yet the wife is never consulted in the making of decisions, or considered in the making of them. It's a strange relationship. <BR/><BR/>kai in nycAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11122973.post-1136444902165579902006-01-04T23:08:00.000-08:002006-01-04T23:08:00.000-08:00Keguro, fascinating points, yes.Here's the thing, ...Keguro, fascinating points, yes.<BR/><BR/>Here's the thing, though. In my case, for example, I have never assumed or envisioned myself as the "addressee" of W and his people. Never. Not from day 1 when the man started his campaign in 1999. I felt the same way about his daddy and about Raygun. It also was clear that they didn't--and don't--consider me part of their "audience." I am not the sort of desiring subject they envision or imagine, even in their wildest moments of extrapolation--and I don't see W extrapolating that much. Maybe Rove, but solely in terms of maximizing W's electoral potential and thus his power--or "capital," as he said in his quasi-Bourdeauian moment.<BR/><BR/>We do desire to be the addressees fo political address, of certain kinds, but I think we also realize the limits of the address, which is where the salient facts of race, ethnicity, class, linguistic registers, gender, sexuality, etc. all come into play. We may begin from the premise that we will not be the subjects of address, that our desire is structured on a very powerful and unremitting lack--at least mine is. I'm not sure that "middle class" and "American" and "democratic" really fully position us as listening and acting subjects, though--maybe in an ideal sense, but I think there are many people who run this democracy--or rather, republic--who consider that people like me exist as exceptions, as outside the framework of address, the law, America, any class. That doesn't make me "outside" the power, exactly, but where does it situate me? In a different place from which I situate msyelf. It's not always a place of resistance, either. But then it's not complicity too. Does this sound far-fetched? Do you think it is? I often feel this way in this country--especially out here in the Midwest. I'm not sure Butler, as a White person, gets into this enough.<BR/><BR/>Fascisms' lures, I agree, create some as desiring subjects, or rather, incorporates them. Fascism has that bodily connotation and appeal--the body of the state, the leader's body, etc. Everything bound tightly together, like the fasces. But what if by our very--what? not nature, but something else--we begin as oppositional to the body that is bound together? What then? We cannot be part of the fascist body? Our desire isn't part of that sociopolitical economy--it exists as a kind of negative presence, a debit. Or least not a credit. Hmmm.....John Khttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08073378940347627766noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11122973.post-1136443419952671502006-01-04T22:43:00.000-08:002006-01-04T22:43:00.000-08:00Great points, Little Milk. In thinking about my r...Great points, Little Milk. In thinking about my readings of histories of the Third Reich, one of the things that always comes back to me is how the Nazis prepared the foundation, through a steady diet of propaganda, controlled and uncontrolled violence, and manipulation of allies, from the time of the Kapp Putsch onwards. By the time they'd seized power, through supposedly Democratic means in 1933, they had already resituated the social and political context for many people to the point that a large portion of the population was acquiescing. Yet they also still encountered considerable opposition, particularly in the cities and among working-class socialists, so this is where state-sanctioned violence really came into play. Your students' questions are the ones I used to ask, before reading people like Klemperer, who held onto a belief, well into the 1930s, that the "German people" were too decent, too rational, to let a madman and his cronies take over. And it got steadily worse. Walter Benjamin once famous wrote that people keep asking when it will end, but that the end will be that point at which the nation reachest the absolute worst. Of course by that point he was already dead, in Port Bou, of a suicide. But still even into 1945 there were people who kept believing their Führer was going to pull things out (of a magic hat, or something).<BR/><BR/>You're right too about the degrees to which people are affected by certain things. I always think of how, during the days of Jim Crow, the differing degrees of racial segregation Blacks experienced based on where they lived. Adrienne Kennedy notes in her book <I>People Who Led to My Plays</I> how she lived among White people in Cleveland--and experienced certain kinds of racial discrimination, but wasn't physically segregated in school or in terms of housing--but when she and her brother would ride the train south, how they'd have to sit in a Black car and how her brother would cry all the way to their destination, in Georgia, I believe. Even as a child she and he perceived the differing degrees of that injust system--she dealt with it by burying herself in fantasies of movies stars and pop idols, while he simply wept his heart out.<BR/><BR/>Fascinating stuff about Brazil too. I would imagine that because of the strong pockets of resistance in Rio and São Paulo that the authorities were probably harshest there. But what about in outlying areas of Santa Catarina, say, or Pará? Who experienced what, and to what degrees?<BR/><BR/>I agree that the roots of fascism predate 1933 (or 1920, which is when Mussolini took over, right?).John Khttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08073378940347627766noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11122973.post-1136437614259780622006-01-04T21:06:00.000-08:002006-01-04T21:06:00.000-08:00I taught a class on German history in Cologne last...I taught a class on German history in Cologne last year to a bunch of kids from the Pennslyvania college system. The thing that struck me the most was not just the speed in which the National Socialist unified the Party with the Government, but my students reaction to reading about "Gleichschaltung".<BR/><BR/>"You mean they could do absolutely nothing?"<BR/><BR/>"Why did people not just get up and leave?"<BR/><BR/>"Why did that Jewish writer stay in France, she could have left?"<BR/><BR/>"I would have just gotten out of the way."<BR/><BR/>Shifts in the balance of power and who wills it can be all encompassing, leaving no film and giving no odour or warning (though I thought the 2000 election gave off a really nasty funk). And that is everywhere. When I ask questions about the military junta of Brazil during the eighties, many or my co-workers respond: "Oh, don't ask him, he is from the interior, he does not even know we had a dictatorship." Just as there are some Germans that were more starkly affected by the Nazi Party than others. The reality of fascism is that for many people life has not changed that much day to day. And if they accept policies that ensure that their life will not be over run, they will agree silently. Especially if they are part of a group that stands to gain much.<BR/><BR/>Second. A friend of a friend survived the second world war, and saw Germany and his little town near Strassbourg turn into a hot house ready to do him in (that is putting it mildly). He has said that the misnomer is that only Germans or Italians can be fascist and no one else. I agree with him. After seeing facism up close in texts, learning German and talking to older people I realize that every society receives the fascism that it deserves. And we have gotten ours.<BR/><BR/>It is the Christians vs. the Infidels, and maybe there is something to be said about traces of fascism that florished before 1933. Are we picking up other pieces of past social behaviors in our critic of American society?<BR/><BR/>The Tsars were a bitch too you know.Littlemilkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08875308841224185781noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11122973.post-1136353590354257432006-01-03T21:46:00.000-08:002006-01-03T21:46:00.000-08:00Reggie, the constant surveillance is very disturbi...Reggie, the constant surveillance is very disturbing. But it's also a part of our economic system, and just think about how we've acquiesced to being ever more closely tracked and carefully marketed to. Years ago many people would have balked at putting their personal information, especially credit cards, etc., online, and now, many people do so without hesitation, use them for everything and that information goes to a wide array of databases that aren't even stored in the US anymore....<BR/><BR/>What really troubles me is the creeping fusion of church and state, and the blasé response among many public commentators to this warrantless wiretapping. How anyone can justify this given the pliability of the FISA secret court to the president's wishes is just mind-boggling. And I'm still waiting to learn how far the spying went. Were they listening to Kerry? To anti-war activists? Who got this information? Will we ever again have a press that's willing to ask and press these sorts of basic and vital questions and demand answers?John Khttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08073378940347627766noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11122973.post-1136349714186757232006-01-03T20:41:00.000-08:002006-01-03T20:41:00.000-08:00That's frightening and very disturbing, John. I'm ...That's frightening and very disturbing, John. I'm also struck by how we've become completly unconcerned about being under constant survaillance with cameras on street corners and intersections, in stores, public transportation, everywhere, all in the name of 'safety and security.' Freedom has become the ability to go shopping, and 'freedom of choice' has boiled down to 'paper or plastic' (that last from George Carlin, not me)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11122973.post-1136348717098717592006-01-03T20:25:00.000-08:002006-01-03T20:25:00.000-08:00. If I could speak in any language in heaven or on....<B><BR/> If I could speak in any <BR/>language in heaven or <BR/>on earth but didn't love <BR/>others, I would only be <BR/>making meaningless noise <BR/>like a loud gong or a <BR/>clanging cymbal. If I <BR/>had the gift of prophecy, <BR/>and if I knew all the <BR/>mysteries of the future <BR/>and knew everything <BR/>about everything, but <BR/>didn't love others, what <BR/>good would I be? And <BR/>if I had the gift of faith <BR/>so that I could speak <BR/>to a mountain and make <BR/>it move, without love <BR/>I would be no good to <BR/>anybody. If I gave <BR/>everything I have to <BR/>the poor and even <BR/>sacrificed my body, <BR/>I could boast about it; <BR/>but if I didn't love others, <BR/>I would be of no value <BR/>whatsoever. Love is <BR/>patient and kind. Love <BR/>is not jealous or boastful <BR/>or proud or rude. Love <BR/>does not demand its <BR/>own way. Love is not <BR/>irritable, and it keeps <BR/>no record of when it <BR/>has been wronged. <BR/>It is never glad about <BR/>injustice but rejoices <BR/>whenever the truth <BR/>wins out. Love never <BR/>gives up, never loses <BR/>faith, is always hopeful, <BR/>and endures through <BR/>every circumstance. <BR/><BR/>May You Always<BR/>Experience This <BR/>Kind Of Love,<BR/>Dr. Howdy</B>Videos by Professor Howdyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12968471138473736952noreply@blogger.com