"In this regressive atmosphere, as David Berreby puts it, writing in The Sciences: 'Americans have a standard playbook for creating a political-cultural identity. You start with the conviction that being a member of your group is a distinct experience, separating you from people who are not in it (even close friends and relatives) and uniting you with other members of the group (even if you have never met them). Second, you assume that your own personal struggles and humiliations and triumphs in wrestling with your trait are a version of the struggles of the group in society. The person is political. Third, you maintain that your group has interests that are being neglected or acted against, and so it must take action - changing how the group is seen by those outside it, for instance.' It's not that such action is bad. It's just that, taken in and by itself, it is massively alienating and fragmenting, a type of pathological pluralism that astonishingly believes that acceptance of my group can be accomplished by aggressively blaming and condemning exactly the group from which I seek the acceptance."
7 comments:
i don't know the whole context of the quote...in my understanding it began to depict the republican and democrats--with that i'm not exactly sure its acceptance more as dominance and control--with that said has anyone glimpsed at sarah palin's new Documentary of her life she is internationally looking for acceptance --the people who are designing and editting it are fucking good and she may even be able to rebuild a political career with it--
The quote is more in reference to any social or cultural "minority," e.g. racial minorities, the disabled, people with certain diseases, people with divorced parents, people of specific "disadvantaged" backgrounds, etc. etc. Part of the point is that everyone is a minority in some sense, and can make claims of oppression against another group. At Hampshire there's like 20 plus identity based groups that compete for poster space, meeting attendance and "understanding" and "social awareness" on a daily basis. Wilber's point is that if everyone sees themselves as an oppressed minority (and everybody can, without looking too hard, find some sort of "oppression" they've suffered in the past) then society becomes fragmented and individuals feel isolated because "no one can understand (unless they've experienced things the way that I have)." The alternative is to start by acknowledging fundamental similarities that affirm human connection and compassion, and then move on to dealing with real issues of structural (institutionalized) oppression with clarity and teamwork (for lack of a more eloquent word).
I am in total agreement with this quote, we need to affirm our innate humanness first and foremost, find solidarity in our shared experience which makes up the vast majority of our life, and then devote our energies to deal with structural oppression. By focusing positively on what unites us, we will have way more stamina to actually address issues rather than feel alienated and bogged down by them. But fuck, maybe this is all informed by my firm position in the oppressor majority as a white, upper middle class male :)
The Quote is great: though he describes one's political identity as if we are cooking food--a lot of the time your "political" identity was inherited, genetic, relative to the environment you grew up in and contrasted strongly in the diverse community of America. For the most part people are not ‘intentionally’ identifying themselves against this rubric. It can be part of your identity for a long time and you may never even question it –subconscious logic. Our social institutions focus heavily in blending and smudging people into the same productive character types from education to the cubicle not actually engaging people in a humanistic communal way --i work with security officers that are as varying as to call me an illegal alien on their worksite to those that smell like an Indian chillum. Yet they don't engage with each other, they simply fulfill their capitalistic mission forty hours a week. i think with the degradation of bridging social capital (social engagements that bring people of different communities together ) we are losing the bonds of humanity and allowing objective presumptions to define our interactions. ESPECIALLY AGAINST THE SPEED OF GLOBALIZATION. Globalization of monetary capital, numbers, technology, concepts and products. While preventing the naturally reflexive patterns of migrations amongst people. When you cannot eat here and live well during this time you move!
The World Social forum and all of the other Social Forums are fighting this within the "activist" communities—most of the time separate communities--in America we have no movement (except the teapartiers) --part of my engagement in the United States Social Forum, USSF, --the larger portion of it has been applying the social forum concept. From the outside the USSF looks like a large activist event that happens every so often in a distant region when in fact after attending the event you are expected to carry on and ripple out its core concept--social forums. The entire USSF is built around the concept of producing space that allows people of different interests to synthesize and collaborate-- Along with skill shares amongst a larger community of similar or same interests. the group that i traveled with to the USSF has been meeting every Monday (tonight ) and we've been working and plotting on ways of intertwining the activist communities and devising ways to have separate groups touch each other more. Some of the reason why we have this blog going.
Random idea:
Matt it would be Dope of you to host an event/start a group that works and facilitates conversations designed to highlight similar issues amongst varying groups around campus—possibly hosting a collective event that lays down a tangible shift on campus that improves the functionality of the groups!!??? Think you could happen?
I am reading this good book that divides causes for social justice in two ways, as there being aspects of both in each struggle but that they are independent; redistribution and recognition.
Redistribution looks at social inequality the primest example being Marxist theory of class struggle. An entire group of people the proletariat is sick of being exploited, of paying someone to squeeze money and work out of them. The method to pursue social justice is then through redistribution of wealth. The overthrow of the bourgeoisie resulting in the leveling of class divisions resulting an equal class without class division and hierarchy.
The other viewpoint of recognition is with social struggles like queer rights. Recognition of the internal, disciplinary ways that a culture vilifies this minority. Social justice would result in removal of practical stigma (allowing queer couples to marry) and the subliminal stigma (Non traditional sexuality being weird/bad all across the media, movie, advertisement spectrum) against being queer.
Looking closely at this, you realize that most struggles have elements of both recognition and redistribution. Take african americans in the states. Is there not a social inequality? Don't an inordinate amount of blacks end up in jail and in the lower economic rungs of society. Overtly and subliminally, this minority must, in order to really abolish its societal disadvantages needs both redistribution and recognition.
Contra to Ken Wilbur, I do believe in value pluralism. I think my vision of social inequality is entrenched in a class position and that fundamentally, I might not share foundational values or views of social justice with a different demographic then my own (white, middle class, heterosexual, anarcho-syndicalist male.) I think that many different values can be correct and fundamental and that these might conflict.
Yes, affirmation of shared humanity is important and crucial to reconciliation. We need to understand the humanity of the people who deal with our toxic e-waste, those whom already are effected by ecological disaster from consumerism. Bt recognition of this will come through redistribution of power, money and economics. Palestinians will never matter as much as Israelis when Israelis are buying our weapons and training our soldiers. An American soldier will never matter as much as an Iraqi as long as social inequality exists.
what was the name of the book?
Redistribution or Recognition? Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth.
Both are bomb critical theorists. Its an argument between the two. I was channeling Nancy Fraser in my above post, not Honneth's.
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