Postmodernism vs. Cuntalinagate

The line of recent posts at IBTP provide an opportunity to talk a little about the work of Judith Butler and how that work bears on discussions of power and resistance.  There’s this shout-out, of sorts, to Butler – I confess that I am unable to discern whether referring to Butler’s ideas as “entertainment” is meant to be complimentary, insulting, or some subtle combination of the two.  There is also, however, a series of posts that comprise “Cuntalinagate,” which started when Twisty called a woman a cuntalina and continues in the comments sections, subsequent posts, and a few pingbacks.

I refer to these posts, not to opine on the dropping of c-bombs, but because they illustrate an important part of the postmodernist critique of the political subject.  Specifically, every discourse creates, as a condition of that discourse, a certain set of signs and markers that identify and categorize the participants and include or exclude different participants based on their adherence to and/or deviation from the accepted categories.  Deconstructing this process means putting aside an emphasis on a “person” and their “position” and instead focusing on what persons and positions are made possible by this process.  Twisty, perhaps inadvertently, performs a postmodern critique by calling into question her own identity – is Twisty a real person or a fictional character? – and what it means to be a radical feminist who steps outside the accepted bounds of radical feminist discourse.

Twisty quotes a gloss of Butler’s work that says the following:

She follows postmodernist and poststructuralist practice in using the term “subject” (rather than “individual” or “person”) in order to underline the linguistic nature of our position within what Jacques Lacan terms the symbolic order, the system of signs and conventions that determines our perception of what we see as reality.

To make sense of this it will help to take apart the use of the term “subject.”  Loosely speaking, when we think of the role of the subject in language, we think of the doer – the active agent, the driving force of a sentence, the noun that takes action.  The “I” in “I went to the park.”  The subject of a sentence, then, is, in some sense, what the sentence is about.  “I went to the park” is a sentence about me; “The park is the place that I went” is a sentence about the park.  If you are the subject of a documentary, the documentary is about you.  Subject invokes primacy, and main-idea-ness.  On the other hand, a King also has subjects.  The King isn’t about his subjects – usually the subjects are described in relation to the King.  You can also be subject to something.  If you disobey the King you might be subject to penalties.  With this usage a subject is one who is subordinate to something else.

So the use of “subject” as a term to describe the part of the person that does things serves a dual purpose.  It does not allow us to view a person either as completely subject to her environment or as completely the subject of it.  It complicates the relationship between person and environment and calls into question the nature of that which takes action.

In this light, we can start to comprehend the claim that the subject is constituted by social relations – that it is produced by a discourse, upon which it is always contingent.  We just have to ask the question, what does it take to be a subject?  In other words, what does it take – within the confines of a specific discourse – to be considered someone who the discourse is about?  And the answer, appropriately, is that one must subject one’s self to the conventions of that discourse in order to be a subject within that discourse.

In the radical feminist discourse of IBTP, those conventions are pretty clear.  IBTP is a particularly good example because most of the conventions are explicitly laid out in the FAQ, guidelines for commenters, and the boilerplate “Blamer Terms of Use Agreement”:

New to I Blame the Patriarchy? Cast your jaundiced eye upon this before commenting.

Blamer Terms of Use Agreement

By clicking the “Blame” button, you affirm that you have read and agree to follow the Guidelines for Commenters. If English is your first language, you agree to use spelling, capitalization, and punctuation consistent with recognized conventions governing same. If you are a dude, you affirm that you have read the FAQ twice, and that, whether or not you are an authoritarian, supercilious asshole in life, you will be otherwise on this blog. All commenters are encouraged to begin their posts with a word other than “I.”

The conventions are not only enforced by moderation, but also by a consensus of Blamers.  As this post points out, the censure of Blamers in the comment section can constitute a significant barrier to entry for those who aren’t careful to use the markers of a Blamer and eschew any misogynist, anti-feminist, or otherwise patriarchal markers that they may have picked up in mainstream discourse.  IBTP has categories to describe those who cleave strictly to these rules, and those who deviate in some acceptable way, and those who deviate in an unacceptable way (for instance, to be a “funfem” or a “sex-positive feminist” or a “nice guy” is to take an acceptable non-radfem position from which to argue, and be argued with; to be an “MRA” is to take an unacceptable non-radfem position to argue from).  There are also certain positions that are not well-accounted for, such as the post-modernist feminist position.

This system is fairly robust – it can easily classify most positions and understand them accordingly.  But what happens when someone in the position of “radical feminist” uses a very anti-feminist term like “cuntalina?”  The frame of radical feminist discourse does not contain a position for a radical feminist who uses radically anti-feminist misogynist slurs; as a result, when that happens, the most widespread result is confusion.  The members of the discourse whose bounds were violated demand that the violator provide an account of herself.  How can this happen?  What do you mean?  What are you really saying?  What is the explanation for this event that can re-situate you in the discourse such that you will once again be intelligible to us?

This system of conventions that govern subject-hood – that determine which positions are accepted, and which forbidden, which are understood and which unintelligible – is socially constructed within each community of practice by its members through discourse.  In order to allow ourselves to be heard and understood within a particular social frame, we must take on a subject-position that is both permitted and intelligible.  Butler’s contention is that identity is a retroactive product of these positions – that identity is simply that which allows people to identify us (or us to identify ourselves), and that we are always identified by reference to one or more subject positions that we have taken on.

In the prevailing patriarchal order, oppression often takes the form of a limited choice of subject-positions.  For instance, for a woman to express the view that women are fully human and thus entitled to the same rights and privileges as men is considered a marker of “feminism,” which in the patriarchal frame is understood in a very specific way – “feminism” is associated with hairy, man-hating lesbians, etc etc, such that the term “feminist” itself can be an ad hominem dismissal of a woman’s position in many circles.  Such a frame is immensely powerful and oppressive, and so from the post-modernist perspective, it is not enough simply to fight from the subject-position of “feminist” – which, after all, is understood and accounted for by a patriarchal frame – but also to constantly problematize the meaning of the subject-position “feminist” itself, and in fact to contest all patriarchal assignments of subject-position so as to allow for new and different options for all humans to occupy.

This is the post-structuralist critique in a nutshell: that the potitical contest between two elements of a dichotomy (man vs. woman, black vs. white, bourgeois vs. proletariat, etc) should be secondary to the contesting of the dichotomy itself.  The oppression is not located in one side or the other, but in the structure of the contest.  Twisty implicity recognizes this by blaming not men, but the Patriarchy, a system in which men are dominant but with which women often collaborate.  And by transgressing the bounds of her own discourse, Twisty has demonstrated how jarring it can be when someone transgresses social boundaries that were previously thought inviolable.

It doesn’t take long for any given transgression to be processed, comprehended, and reintegrated into the prevailing social order.  Therefore the goal, from Butler’s point of view, is not to simply find a transgressive position and stay in it, but to constantly bring into view, through transgressions and other strategies, the contingent nature of the categories and subject-positions that we occupy, so that we can learn to recognize and accommodate, rather than ignore and oppress, new and unconventional positions as they arise.

This strategy makes sense from a historical point of view.  Historically, the women’s movement has always gained some synergy from other movements or events challenging the prevailing social order – from Wollstonecraft’s deployment of classical liberalism to argue in favor of education for women, to the increases in women’s rights that came about after WWII made “Rosie the Riveter” a valid subject-position.  If this is true, it also follows that an increase in the recognition of women who occupy non-patriarchal subject-positions would also synergistically make more subject-positions available to other oppressed classes of people.  This is why any study of the resistance to power and oppression is heavily staked in feminist movements, post-colonial movements, etc.

Speaking of post-colonial, I hope to follow up this post with a commentary on RaceFail ‘09 from a post-colonial perspective, specifically using Fanon to deconstruct some of the assumptions floating around about race and culture.  RaceFail is also of interest because the subject-position of an author seems to be of critical importance to many participants.

Monopoly

The name of the game is Monopoly.  The object of the game is to win.  You win by having the most net worth at the end of the game or by being the last player left after all other players have gone bankrupt.

Basically, your goal is to collect money and property – as much as possible, by any means available.

Most people are probably familiar with Monopoly, which makes it a good example for a thought experiment.

Imagine that four friends are playing Monopoly and a fifth friend shows up and asks to get into the game even though some number of turns have already passed.  How can this fifth friend be integrated into the game?

One way is to start the person the way everyone else started: at Go, with $1500 and a pair of dice.  The beginning is the logical place to start, after all.  This method presents problems, though.  The four original players have had many turns to increase their wealth and their earning potential.  Many good properties have already been bought.  Monopolies may have already been established.  Depending on how late in the game it is, this fifth player may be at some great disadvantage.  Imagine if 90% of the properties on the board are already owned.  The fifth player has virtually no chance of winning – of surviving on the board – under these circumstances.

Another way is to grant the person some portion of the money/property on the board.  You could total the value of the properties each player owns, average the totals, and then randomly assign the new player  unowned properties until that average is approximated.  You could do the same for money.  However, if there isn’t enough unowned property to do this, you’d have to take property away from some of the players who are already playing.  How can this be done fairly?  Should the property be taken from the winning player(s), or equally from all?

Another way is to simply restart the game.  This isn’t necessarily fair to the players who were doing well – their good luck and good strategy ends up going unrewarded.  However, the player(s) who think(s) he/she/they would have won can at least declare victory in this case.  I have found that generally speaking
this is the most oft-chosen option for inserting a new player into an existing game, for the simple reason that usually at least half of the players are not winning and usually the choice of methods comes down to a loosely democratic vote:  All of the players who are losing choose to restart.

Aside from the highly practical use that this line of thinking has in actually inserting new players into existing games – a situation I have encountered in life from time to time – we can also consider the larger implications, like when we insert new players into the more realistic economic systems presented by, for instance, the economy.  Imagine, for instance, that half the population of some country was playing some game analogous to Monopoly – attempting to acquire money and property and personal enrichment – for years, or decades, or centuries.  Imagine then that the other half demanded to be inserted into the game.  How would we fairly insert these newcomers?

Obviously this question is not simply theoretical.  Various large population groups have been granted property rights in our history – women, for instance, and blacks – rights which amount to $1500 and a pewter thimble.  These groups were then allowed to compete freely with the people who already owned almost all of the property, people who were busily going through the Monopoly winning strategies of bankrupting whoever they could and consolidating and developing their assets.

Just letting someone into the game doesn’t establish fairness.  These groups weren’t really given a chance.  Even those who did start off with some property – many former slaves were given land during Reconstruction, and women could always inherit an estate from a husband or father – were still at a disadvantage.  Imagine starting a game of Monopoly with a house on Baltic Avenue when another player has hotels on Boardwalk and Park Place.

In the game of the American economy, women, blacks, and immigrant groups have had to claw their way up from the bottom with the help of luck, charity, and government aid.  It’s no wonder that the players who are already winning want to deny entry to immigrants, why they fought to keep women from having the right to own property.  It’s no wonder that the players who aren’t doing so well want to restart the game and distribute everything evenly.  But when we assess some data – the wage gap between men and women, for instance – it’s important to keep in mind that some of the players started late.  If women owned half the property and controlled half the wealth in the American economy, would there still be a wage gap?

And before we say that some group has had enough opportunity to improve their lot, let’s ask ourselves how many turns we would need before we caught up in a game of Monopoly if we started fifty turns late.

Again, no solution presents itself.  What is fairness?  How can all players be satisfied with a solution?  Certainly whatever happens, it will require the cooperation of people who don’t currently acknowledge that there is a significant problem with how the game was set up in the first place.

Authentic Human Desire vs. Power

First and foremost, this is a post inspired by the OSBP situation. Having first heard about this situation via my most oft-visited news source (LiveJournal), I assumed that theferrett was, like, a friend of a friend or something, and that the situation hadn’t reached great internet fame just yet. Turns out it’s been analyzed to death already, and I don’t know how it came to be news on my LJ friends’ page (although at least one of my LJ friends has theferrett friended, and, perhaps ironically, it’s a girl who once called me a misogynist), but I’ve been thinking about it all day.

A few years ago I was struck by the phrase “authentic human desire.” I am not quite sure who I was reading at the time – it strikes me that it was related to Žižek in some way, but that may be because I’m going to relate my analysis back to Freud and Lacan. Something about the backlash against the OSBP brought all this stuff into my head and provoked a strong reaction – almost a defensiveness.

The OSBP was basically a con game where people (and by people I mean women) could opt into a system where other people (and here we’d assume that these other people would predominantly be men) could ask them, without penalty, “could I touch your breasts.”  If the woman says no, the dude has to respect that, and if she says yes, he gets to touch her breasts.  Those in favor of this project pointed out that it was a more open and honest way to interact.  Those against the project seemed likely to condemn men for wanting to touch a woman’s breasts, or at least for expressing that desire to the woman.