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Walpurgis
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Re:brief critical analysis
« Reply #30 on: 2002-06-22 05:04:26 » |
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[kharin] Cultural difference, must, ultimately be derived from biological difference. There can be no other source.
[Walpurgis] I*ve never seen such a position held outside of socio-biology. I*d be interested in seeing you defend such a position. As I understand it, cultural difference is due to the multifaceted influences of history. Some people talk in terms of memes (rather than genes). The sources are multiple and evident.
Whether a white man wears a suit instead of a baseball cap turned backwards is a matter of personal-cultural history, not biology.
On the other hand, I may be missing the subtlety of your statement. If you are claiming culture and biology are interface at the basic levels, then I do not disagree (are you aware of Bookchin*s theories?: http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/bookchin/socecol.html)
Biology is the basis of all ideas (that is: they neurons/sense perception) as well as culture in the sense that we - the cultural beings - are biological. However, I don*t think strong biological determinist arguments can be derived from this. Also, cultural differences are much more than *just* biological difference. I don*t think you are claiming either. If this is the case, I agree.
[kharin] Your argument seems to be that because gender is an attribute,
[Walpurgis] Gender is a complex fiction socialised into children from (and often before) birth. It probably arose historically from the social differences resulting from secondary sexual characteristics and the effects of reproduction/birth on the fe/male (there is your biological basis). But the specifities of gender have long socio-historical developments, far removed from the basic biological influences.
[kharin] Gender, as with any other signifier is arbitrary and the degree to which differance is perceived is therefore likely to vary.
[Walpurgis] I agree. The *naturalness* and the *differences* of gender identity are part of the overall ideology of gender. Because gender identity is an ideology arising from historical conditions it does not really exist as a property in individuals. Therefore, trying to empirically analyse masculinity or femininity as a collection of character traits is misguided. It does not exist within men and women as an innate characteristic. To clarify this position it is useful to draw an analogy. Race is a similar ideology of identity with a historical development. Like gender, people imagine themselves to be members of a particular race and in this sense a race actually exists. But the psychological or biological essence of *race* does not exist nor does it cause race nor does it explain racial difference. On biological grounds there could be no explanation as to why a race at one time was not considered to exist or how the conception of it has changed historically. We could not define a true racial identity for a race group, but the members would behave as if they belonged to one. The natural fact of certain biological differences (like skin colour or genitalia) provide convenient explanations for difference, but they do not actually explain differences in wealth, health, social status, intelligence and so on. These differences are present because it is the social ideology of race or gender, and the social structures and practices in which these identities are imbedded, that result in different life experiences, opportunities, status, work, and arrangement of identity.
[kharin] No. The imposed homogeneity is frequently identical to that of wider society. It is an acceptance of marginalisation.
[Walpurgis] I*m not sure how you are disagreeing with me here. I am saying the label *women* is homogenising because it does not take race, class, sexuality etc as well as personal history and idiosyncrasies into account.
[kharin] In which case, we have only indviduals and not a group.
[Walpurgis] In a sense, yes. But if people believe they belong to a group, then there *is* a group sui generis.
[kharin] Groups are defined in sociological terms on the basis of common attributes, not relational terms, no matter what Phillips might wish to be the case.
[Walpurgis] Relational theories of groups seem perfectly reasonable to me. What a group is, is arbitrary if you dig deep enough, and so are common attributes except on the most basic levels. How a group relates can be more important to a group than common attributes.
Are you familiar with Sartre*s theory of groups?
[kharin] Opposition is simply not intrinsically contingent to the opposed values being hieratic. While I know that Cixous identified it as being such her argument was also that this was a particular flaw for western societies; yet it is the west that has done the most to improve the standing of women, while countries like Japan remain deeply patriachal. I do not regard this as being accidental.
[Walpurgis] Could you unpack this comment please?
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This experience is evident in the political gender gap (amongst many other problems). The gender gap is a lack of interest and identification with mainstream party politics. Squires discusses this as a *positive statement of disillusionment and discontent.* This is because the political agenda is set mainly by men, alienating women from it.
[kharin] This is simply inaccurate. When the Labour party established the Emily*s list system, women fell over themselves to take part in it.
[Walpurgis] I disagree with Squires that there is widespread alienation also. But I do agree with her than men mainly set the agenda.
[kharin] The result was that Parliament did attain gender parity, which suggests to me that the problem lay with selection procedures not the relation of women to politics.
[Walpurgis] Exactly how has parliament gained gender parity when the current number of women MPs is one hundred and twenty out of over six hundred and fifty? If numbers aren*t the measure of parity, what do you think is?
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Indeed, those very women who do gain representative powers do not mark their political careers with their sexual identities because of this sense of diffidence.
[kharin] This is a very patronising argument (and not entirely truthful either). Are you really so sure that women do not wish to be defined by their gender identity in public life? When the Lib Dems proposed discrimination for Parliamentary candidates it was women who rejected the notion that their gender defined them, who rejected being made into tokens and who defeated the party motion.
[Walpurgis] This - again - is Squires argument. I*m a little unsure about it, as gender is so criss-crossed with other identities, I*m not sure how she could reach this conclusion. It seems odd to reject the idea that a woman*s gender experiences have nothing to do with her politics. Perhaps squires can*t get Thatcher out of her mind?  Perhaps she means that women MPs have not done enough for women as far as she is concerned - and she sees this as diffidence.
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This last objection of essentialism can be fended off using the conclusions above regarding the requirement for a variety of *subject positions*.
[kharin] As explained above, it cannot outside of the page.
[Walpurgis] Only if you reject the idea that groups are ever relational. Groups cannot possible be held together just by the power of common attributes. There more be relation - and often this relation takes precedence.
[kharin] More doublespeak! It*s not remotely evident.
[Walpurgis] Hey! not many people are so perceptive as to pick up on my doublespeak! *L*
[Walpurgis1] If men could fully empathise with women, they would not be oppressed in the first place.
[kharin] On the basis of that argument there is no alternative to oppression since the conditions that produce the discrimination cannot be amended or altered.
[Walpurgis2] Only if one thinks empathy is an absolute state. there are degrees of empathy, and men can empathise closer to women*s experience than they do now. furthermore, this problem is set up by gender dualism, which is also relative and flexible. *Gender-bending* can give men a great deal of empathy with women. Living as a woman will certainly help you, many men believe they are women, many men seek to dissolve gender boundaries. With the abolish of gender, no such empathic barrier would exist.
[kharin] very few (my estimate, but you must agree that there would be division on this) women have any wish to be perceived as a community in their own right).
[Walpurgis] Agreed, only radical feminist separatists want this. However, there are women who want a stronger sense of *solidarity* or *sisterhood* and in this sense, there is community; only that it still relates to men in some way or another.
[Walpurgis1] The following two objections concerning national unity and common good are cleverly disguised forms of conservatism.
[kharin] Ad hominem arguments are another logical fallacy and dismissing an argument on the basis of origins is not helpful.
[Walpurgis] It isn*t an ad hominem argument. But if you object to such arguments, then why are you always citing Foucault*s personal interests? (As an aside, you wrote somewhere that Chomsky considered Foucault amoral - I would consider this a compliment, though Chomsky obviously didn*t intend it to be).
[kharin] Even the most pluralistic society does depend on having what Gadamer would call a common horizon. It seems to me that what you are proposing would make any such notion impossible.
[Walpurgis] What was I proposing? I don*t disagree that societies need commonalities, but some commonalities are clever forms of subjection. Any sweeping unifying force will swamp some minority and individual interests, values and concerns. The best unifying force I can think of (and would defend) is geniune consensus (though, not *democratic majority takes all* consensus).
[Walpurgis1] The terms *unity* and *common* yet again invoke the gender blind lie, where the terms refer to masculine values posing as universal values.
[kharin] As we have already gone over, terms do not intrinsically refer to anything. There is absolutely no reason why unity and commonality cannot be universal. Historical origins are persiflage, nothing more.
[Walpurgis2] I*m not convinced. Certainly, words don*t intrinsically refer, but they do have histories. It is not origins with which I am concerned, but the total historical development, the most important being present usage. You can certainly use *common* in a universal sense (it is not intrinsically patriarchal in meaning), but it must be qualified in the context you use it.
[kharin] The Sapir/Lee Whorf hypothesis has pretty much been completely discredited. The only grounds to assert that language is paramount in this regard are essentially those of a private mythology.
[Walpurgis] I*m not convinced that language is not ideologically informed and as such, uninfluential. I am not asserting it is paramount, just important. Are you familiar with the sociological discipline of *conversation analysis*? If you are interested, I could send you an essay that illustrates this point.
[kharin] Precisely because, as Orwell knew, the manipulation of language away from consensus positions leads into very dangerous waters indeed.
[Walpurgis] What kind of consensus? I am not sympathetic to the tyranny of the majority.
[Walpurgis1] For example Walby writes: *A phallocentric order... holds that only the heterosexual masculine is fully equivalent with the human and the normal.* in Waldby, C. - AIDS and The Body Politic - Biomedicine and Sexual Difference, p9 The *man* - in word and form - is the norm; and this norm is masculine.
[kharin] That doesn*t answer the question. Nor does it demonstrate, it asserts and is accordingly worthless. I was asking for evidence as to contemporary linguistic usage not unsubstantiated assertion. Appeal to authority is a logical fallacy as far as debate is concerned.
[Walpurgis2] This was more a book recommendation. I don*t have the time or inclination to summarise her book.
[Walpurgis] could it be that etymology *is* usage?
[kharin] I consider that extremely unlikely. The vast majority of etymology is little more than dead layers of meaning which point to the hermeuntics of the past, not the present. In my view eytmology is now little more than a historical anachronism and should be treated as such.
[Walpurgis] An interesting and clear observation, thanks.
[Walpurgis1] *L* I had no idea! Then how did *gay* become appropriated? Was it a way of subverting an insult? In which case, it was still a clever PR move.
[kharin] No, the meaning had already shifted to mean *happy, carefree* etc.
[Walpurgis2] Isn*t that why I said homosexuals adopted it in the first place!?
[kharin] I doubt if any re-appropriation would have been attempted on a mass scale had that not been the case, and any attempt would certainly have failed in the way that *queer* already has.
[Walpurgis] You consider *queer* a failure? Perhaps my proximity to the culture gives me a distorted (or just different?) perceptive on its usage? Or perhaps it is enjoying a renaissance in my circles?
[Walpurgis1] Odd. Many of the gay/les., BDSM and TV groups I am aware of accept *queer*, as do the Bi and polyamorous groups I associate with.
[kharin] Groups would. Groups, however, are completely beside the point.
[Walpurgis2] I don*t think politically active groups are as irrelevant as you feel.
[kharin] You are referring to a very marginalised minority. The same applies to the issue of sexual non-comformity amongst what you term *amongst the G/L/TV/BDSM/poly communities* (though I am less that persauded that such a notion is meaningful)* since in practice those groups have very little involvement with each other.
[Walpurgis] To some degree, you are correct. The polyamorous *community* has no real community to speak of across the UK, other than a friendly mailing list. The yahoo group is mainly spam/off-topic and the alt.newsgroup is intersected by other sexual non-conformists. In that sense though, poly. is an aspect of many non-conformist sexual orientations, especially the BDSM and homosexual groups. Lesbians are usually very disapproving of poly, unless they are involved in BDSM. There is great cross over with the homosexual lesbian groups, bi groups are more marginalized, but tend to interface with homo/les and poly groups for obvious reasons. The picture is complex but fascinating. There *are* umbrella groups, and I would disagree that G/L/TV/BDSM/poly have *very little involvement with each other*. At least, IMExperience, this is not the case.
[kharin] *For younger gays and lesbians, societal acceptance is a matter of course. Kim Brinster, manager of Oscar Wilde, said: *When I was coming out, it was drilled into us the importance of supporting gay restaurants, gay bars, gay bookstores. But now gays take this all for granted, a byproduct of assimilation.*
[Walpurgis] This is fair regarding the big cities and so long as homo/les maintain the usual social dynamics (ie. they follow other sexual/relational norms/laws like those concerning age, number of partners etc).
[kharin] I would still assert that exclusion is not something to strive for.
[Walpurgis] Perhaps not exclusion, but separatism might be worth it. Nonetheless, I prefer to work to inclusion.
[kharin] Equality must be based on some notion of contingency or the term becomes utterly otiose.
[Walpurgis] Yes, which does not disqualify difference.
[kharin] In practice demands for equality must be based on some notion of what that entails; and that can only be derived from some notion of contingency. A good example if the idea of gay marriage, where the conservative right and radical left have been happily fighting for the same cause for sometime (as they did on the issue of military service) in opposing the idea. If you seek partnerships as an alternative to marriage (the argument runs: the needs of gays are different and they do not wish to be trapped in a heterosexual institution etc etc) they it becomes very difficult to establish parity. How do you know if the partnerships actually deliver equality or whether they have not created a form of insititutionalised discrimination?
[Walpurgis] I agree that the radicals should not fight against this. If homosexuals want to be involved in this institution they should have the choice. Not only that, but it legally and socially places them on the same footing as monogamous heteros. Same with women going to war. This should not stop the radical criticising war or marriage however. I consider some of my positions radical, but I would not join this fight against homosexual marriage. Be careful of broad dismissals.
[kharin] Different but equal is essentially an impossiblity since it leaves you few means of establishing comparability.
[Walpurgis] There are plenty of means. It depends on the degree of difference. Equality does not imply universal conformity, only conformity to the laws that govern equality.
[kharin] I don*t regard the term *conformist* as meaning anything. Non-comformism typically seems to manifest itself in terms of group identification (even if the group happens to be a sub-group, identifying as queer is nothing more than conformism to a differing set of norms). It should also be observed the smaller the subgroup the greater the tendency towards conformism.
[Walpurgis] If *conformist* means nothing to you, then why do you use it? I*m sure you realise what I mean. I agree that non-conformity *can* involve conformity to other norms/values (though it can also imply radical individuality). Obviously, some behaviour is always conformed to, otherwise one would be utterly alien.
*Conformity* usual refers to obeying the majority/typical norms of a society. In sexual terms, this would be mono-heterosexuality without too large an age gap and usually in the same race/ethnicity.
[Walpurgis] But that same man wrote before his death *love is the greatest painkiller of them all* so perhaps he changed his mind?
[kharin] That does sound more congruent to what I said concerning his quest for oblivion of the self.
[Walpurgis] I was referring to WSB - he wrote those words.
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Kharin
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Re:brief critical analysis
« Reply #31 on: 2002-06-24 13:08:44 » |
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Quote:| I agree. The *naturalness* and the *differences* of gender identity are part of the overall ideology of gender. |
My point precisely.
Quote:| I*m not sure how you are disagreeing with me here. |
Frankly, I'm losing track of what you are saying. I was rather under the impression (mistaken clearly) that you kept on quoting Squires because you agreed with her. If this is not entirely correct, it becomes difficult to ascertain what is or is not bring propounded.
Quote:| In a sense, yes. But if people believe they belong to a group, then there *is* a group sui generis. |
I don't think that this would be adequate in sociological terms.
Quote:| Exactly how has parliament gained gender parity when the current number of women MPs is one hundred and twenty out of over six hundred and fifty? If numbers aren*t the measure of parity, what do you think is? |
Forgive me, poor memory. In essence, the numbers did rise massively after the 1997 election. The numbers then fell after the last general election, which seems to me to create problems for the idea of lists; these lists were supposed to break glass ceilings, not to create a permanent 'command economy. ' I suspect elaboration on this particular subject could be better done in a separate thread though. It does go off at a slight tangent.
Quote:| Agreed, only radical feminist separatists want this. However, there are women who want a stronger sense of *solidarity* or *sisterhood* and in this sense, there is community; only that it still relates to men in some way or another. |
Hmmm. I'm left wondering if the feminist separatists don't have the more consistent approach. In practice, women usually do tend to form informal networks not dissimilar to the above (I daresay I can dig out the source for that, but don't expect a quick reply if you want it); it's just that the above suggestion sounds something rather more contrived and artificial (not unlike certain women in the seventies becoming lesbian for political reasons). I'm rather pessimistic than solidarity of that kind is something that can be engineered.
Quote:| Only if you reject the idea that groups are ever relational. Groups cannot possible be held together just by the power of common attributes. There more be relation - and often this relation takes precedence. |
The specific problem here is (and I should have brought this out earlier) that you seem to be using the notion of relational attributes in a somewhat invalid manner. In terms of social identity theory, the three main concepts are categorization, identification and comparison (Tajfel and Turner, 1979), the latter being the closest to your relational component. One of the points concerning that is it acts as a reinforcement mechanism in relation to the other two concepts. The extent to which it tends to reinforce internal group diversity is comparatively very weak indeed.
Quote:| It isn*t an ad hominem argument. But if you object to such arguments, then why are you always citing Foucault*s personal interests? |
Twice hardly seems congruent with 'always.' However, the point is not entirely unfair. My main critcism of Foucault related to my observations citing Koestler and Zizek. This was not ad hominem. More generally, the reason for citing the author function was because it did seem to me imply a different perspective on the work, which was altered thereby. It does seem to me that such considerations are something that Foucault's own work points to, hence the figure in the carpet metaphor. But you still haven't explained why those arguments do not pertain rather than dismissing them; it seems to me a form of ad hominem to assert that an argument need not be considered because of its classification; against the source, if not against the man.
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Who knows? Certainly not poor old Phillips or Squires  .
Quote:| I*m not convinced that language is not ideologically informed and as such, uninfluential. |
Forgive me for being blunt, but you keep on asserting your lack of conviction without citing evidence to the contrary. What are the grounds on which you cite the historical development of language as having a contemporary ideological impact? What is this evidence for the feedback loop you speak of? I would still suggest that the evidence for linguistic determinism is poor, the evidence for etymology being pertinent to usage and hermeneutics equally poor and the socio-linguistic evidence that gender associations in language reform themselves in line with changing societal attitudes pretty much overwhelming:
Quote:| The determinist argument, can be illustrated by the view that men are perceived to have built positive associations into motherhood, thereby making it difficult for women to acknowledge negative associations pertaining to it. The argument suffers as it leaves it unclear whether women are without linguistic resources because they are without power or because they need linguistic resources to increase their power. However the mere fact that many of sexist phrases originally possessed unsexualised meanings, indicates that the process can be reversed through the same process. For example the term 'glamour' originally possessed connotations of female witchery, which has altered to something rather more benign, albeit something still largely applied to women. |
Quote:| Are you familiar with the sociological discipline of *conversation analysis*? |
Yes, I am (a great deal better than you, I would suspect). The difficulty with conversation analysis, as I wrote in my paper on the subject, is this:
Quote:Clearly the interpretation of these differences is a matter of considerable difficulty, particularly as these features are only associated with women's speech and are not necessarily intrinsic to it; not all women use hyper correct standard forms. The first point to be made at this stage is that there has been a tendency to view women's language as a set of deviations from a male norm. As such, statistical interpretation can be made an extremely subjective matter, a rough parallel to the idea that cockney glottal stops are nasal. Men's speech is seen as normal, and it is only when women's speech deviates from this that it becomes an issue (although arguably attempts to elevate a separate women's speech to the status of a ghetto are no less problematic). One way around this has been to stress social networks rather than stratification models, and therefore parole rather than langue. It may well be the case that social segregation produces many of these differences, as a large amount of female employment is in the service sector which requires usage of standard english to a far greater extent than traditional male occupations. Women therefore have to switch linguistic codes rather more sharply than would be necessary amongst the tightly knit networks which stress solidarity among male participants, and which therefore may create far more unity among their members. It is particularly well worth noting that there is no evidence of innate conservatism on the part of women; in Madagascar it is the men who demarcated as the guardians of revered speech traditions.
Such an approach certainly merits further extension, to consider that gender is not an entirely independent category; it is bisected by social divisions, since men still tend to hold higher status positions than women. Nonetheless when this is taken into account the results become rather more unpredictable. In one survey male subordinates received over three and a half times more assent than their female bosses, and were also more successful at being interrupted less often. On the other hand, another survey undertaken by Janet Holmes sought to cross-reference gender with social status. With this, facilitative tags were used by 75% of women and 45% of men of higher power status, but were not used by those of lower power status of any gender. The same was true of 'softeners' used by 10% of women and 7% of men of higher power status. Conversely modal tags, requesting information of which the speaker is uncertain were increased by 10% in the case of women of lower power status. Gender differences remain but have been strikingly altered, since it starts to emerge that the supposed characteristics of women's speech have emerged elsewhere, for instance in the language of parents and children. |
Quote:| What kind of consensus? I am not sympathetic to the tyranny of the majority. |
In such matters, I fear that you are just going to have to remain trapped in the prison house of language  . By definition language exists for the purpose of facilitating communication (leaving issues of hermeneutics aside); using it as a weapon for political empowerment rather than for communications does seem to me a somewhat unethical practice. While obviously individuals and sub-groups will have slightly differing usages of languages, the other danger of such linguistic interventionism is that you end up with talking only to yourself, which would seem a poor way of advancing a cause.
Quote:| You consider *queer* a failure? Perhaps my proximity to the culture gives me a distorted (or just different?) perceptive on its usage? Or perhaps it is enjoying a renaissance in my circles? |
At the risk of rudeness, I must admit to being somewhat sceptical concerning your purported proximity, as it sounds disturbingly akin to 'I have many gay friends' (I could be wrong, but that's how it comes across). My own experience is that the term queer is now essentially extinct within the gay community outside of heavily politicised groups. I very rarely see the term anywhere else. Anecdotal, I agree, but still suggestive to my mind. Trying to find some more solid statistics I did find a survey from New Zealand wherein gay men were allowed to express identification with multiple categories, the results being gay (79.6%), homosexual (66.4 %), and queer (39.2%), with the suspicion that queer would drop to zero if the participants had been asked to select one. I suspect hard figures probably don't exist, which makes this debate more than a little difficult.
Quote:| I don*t think politically active groups are as irrelevant as you feel. |
Oh, I didn't say that all groups are irrelevant, merely the ones you were alluding to. I can only offer by way of reply the observation that the largest gay rights organisation, stonewall, does not use the term queer. Outrage, which does, has become more and more marginalised. Given the deliberately aggressive choice of phrase I would have thought that marginalisation and obscurity went with the territory.
Quote:| There *are* umbrella groups, and I would disagree that G/L/TV/BDSM/poly have *very little involvement with each other*. At least, IMExperience, this is not the case. |
I was mainly referring to the gay community in general (confusion over the word group I fear). In practice, there is some cross-over of interest (i.e. gross obsenity laws cause a problem in more than a few of those areas) but by and large while specific individuals will share interests, I remain sceptical as to whether the relevant communities as a whole do. Beyond that, the concept of such a polymorphous identity may simply be just too cumbersome. While looking for that survey I found articles concerning straight people identifying as queer. I suspect that an identity that is so all-encompassing probably leaves its components feeling erased.
Quote:| This is fair regarding the big cities and so long as homo/les maintain the usual social dynamics (ie. they follow other sexual/relational norms/laws like those concerning age, number of partners etc). |
I think I would follow your own sage observations regarding such matters (to accept rights to institutional access does not preclude criticism of said institutions); one can seek equality and integration while continuing to criticise elements of those social dynamics (especially as neither of those issues is confined to the issue of homosexuality), particularly given that sexuality does not serve as a predicate of viewpoint on either issue that you point to.
Quote:| Perhaps not exclusion, but separatism might be worth it. |
I think this is where we differ; in my experience the problem with separatism is that it is almost entirely congruent to exclusion.
Quote:| There are plenty of means. It depends on the degree of difference. |
Hmmm. So would a civil partnership scheme be equal to marriage then? Even if it offered all of the same rights ? Would it be accepted as such or regarded as a poor relation?
Quote:| Equality does not imply universal conformity, only conformity to the laws that govern equality. |
I think this is a straw argument. While there will certainly be a gap between legal equality and 'conformity' the two categories will also occupy much the same space. In the context we've been discussing it would mean accepting equality on marriage rights and thereby 'conforming' to attendant notions that you have identified (age gaps, number of partners). While I would certainly concede that difference is not necessarily excluded by contingency, it seems less than accurate to suggest that difference and equality do not conflict in a great many ways.
Quote:| This should not stop the radical criticising war or marriage however. I consider some of my positions radical, but I would not join this fight against homosexual marriage. Be careful of broad dismissals. |
The observation related to the problems of establishing equality without contingency rather than your own views; but you can hardly deny that radical groups do take the 'different but equal' line to that extreme. In practice, the middleground is a somewhat slim plot, regrettably or otherwise.
Quote:| If *conformist* means nothing to you, then why do you use it? |
Normally I would not use the term and had not done so prior to this occasion for a very long time indeed (IIRC). It featured in the reply simply because that was the subject you had broached. Otherwise, I would simply have used the phrase 'group identification,' which has the advantage of lacking the perjorative connotations of 'conformism.'' To cite an earlier example, I would observe that the gay community certainly tends to be fiercely 'conformist;' self definition in opposition to an environment percived as hostile (though my anecdotal observation is that this is diminishing). Interesting related article at:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1065-292857,00.html
Quote:| The gay scene can be deeply conformist. Liberated? The haircuts, the pecs, the clothes, the drinks, the music and dance, the vocabulary are worn like a uniform. In the streets of Soho and the juice-bars you might sometimes think that on the visible tip of the iceberg of gay culture, “out” homosexual men had broken one mould only to stamp upon themselves a stricter one. Some contemporary social commentary has noticed this. |
[That's the relevant point (albeit a blindingly obvious one), though the rest of the article is far more interesting]
Quote:| *Conformity* usual refers to obeying the majority/typical norms of a society. |
That is why I don't use the term; it offers a somewhat hypocritical claim to exemption from certain norms that a group differs from and elides those that the groups assert itself. The process of determining what those norms might happen to be is a very arbitrary one indeed.
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Walpurgis
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Re:brief critical analysis
« Reply #32 on: 2002-06-24 17:50:30 » |
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[kharin] Frankly, I*m losing track of what you are saying. I was rather under the impression (mistaken clearly) that you kept on quoting Squires because you agreed with her. If this is not entirely correct, it becomes difficult to ascertain what is or is not bring propounded.
[Walpurgis] I quoted her because I thought her views needed discussing. I don*t always agree with who I quote or what I write. Its all for the sake of thrashing out ideas. You seem good at it, if somewhat pert
[Walpurgis1] In a sense, yes. But if people believe they belong to a group, then there *is* a group sui generis.
[kharin] I don*t think that this would be adequate in sociological terms.
[Walpurgis2] It seems adequate for Durkheim. Could you explain why you don*t think it adequate? If you approached several people who considered themselves a group, how often could you convince them that they weren*t?
[kharin] The specific problem here is (and I should have brought this out earlier) that you seem to be using the notion of relational attributes in a somewhat invalid manner. In terms of social identity theory, the three main concepts are categorization, identification and comparison (Tajfel and Turner, 1979), the latter being the relational component. One of the points relating to that is it acts as a reinforcement mechanism in relation to the other two concepts. The extent to which it tends to reinforce internal group diversity is comparatively very weak indeed.
[Walpurgis] Lets be more specific about terms then. What do you consider an attribute? (Race? Class? Gender? Ethnicity? Football team?). Do people only relate if they share common attributes? If this is your argument, it seems fair to a point. Some commonality would be necessary for relation, but would that be anything more than a form of communication?
[kharin] More generally, the reason for citing the author function was because it did seem to me imply a different perspective on the work, which was altered thereby.
[Walpurgis] I agree, this is fine. I don*t think one can ignore a writers life and how it influences their work. Biography seems entirely relevant.
[Walpurgis1] I*m not convinced that language is not ideologically informed and as such, uninfluential.
[kharin] Forgive me for being blunt, but you keep on asserting your lack of conviction without citing evidence to the contrary.
[Walpurgis2] I think you provide it. You say that language can be used for political purposes. Therefore, language can be ideologically informed and said ideology may have a long history. For example, the masculinisation of the xtian god seems to be informed by patriarchal ideology.
[kharin] What is this evidence for the feedback loop you speak of?
[Walpurgis] Try to separate language and society and isolate them. Perhaps you*d like to try basing language on logical axioms?
[kharin] I would still suggest that the evidence for linguistic determinism is poor, the evidence for etymology being pertinent to usage and hermeneutics equally poor and the socio-linguistic evidence that gender associations in language reform themselves in line with changing societal attitudes
[Walpurgis] Here is the feedback loop. how do attitudes change if the language that expresses them is not changing too? Isn*t use of s/he just such change?
[kharin] pretty much overwhelming: The determinist argument, can be illustrated by the view that men are perceived to have built positive associations into motherhood, thereby making it difficult for women to acknowledge negative associations pertaining to it. The argument suffers as it leaves it unclear whether women are without linguistic resources because they are without power or because they need linguistic resources to increase their power. However the mere fact that many of sexist phrases originally possessed unsexualised meanings, indicates that the process can be reversed through the same process. For example the term *glamour* originally possessed connotations of female witchery, which has altered to something rather more benign, albeit something still largely applied to women.
[Walpurgis] Interesting stuff! Though I would say *glamour* was a poor example o a non-sexualised meaning. As it pertains to women, it is sexualised. Try thinking of a woman without thinking of her sex.
[Walpurgis1] Are you familiar with the sociological discipline of *conversation analysis*?
[kharin] Yes, I am (a great deal better than you, I would suspect). The difficulty with conversation analysis, as I wrote in my paper on the subject, is this: (snip)
[Walpurgis2] Very interesting! Do you have any thoughts as to how gender itself is sustained, invented and reinforced in conversation? Perhaps this might illustrate gender differences in language use with greater clarity? It would be interesting to make a complete gender study of the communicative spectrum, including haptics, proxemics and kinesics...
[kharin] By definition language exists for the purpose of facilitating communication (leaving issues of hermeneutics aside); using it as a weapon for political empowerment rather than for communications does seem to me a somewhat unethical practice.
[Walpurgis] How so?
[kharin] While obviously individuals and sub-groups will have slightly differing usages of languages, the other danger of such linguistic interventionism is that you end up with talking only to yourself, which would seem a poor way of advancing a cause.
[Walpurgis] But I*m talking to you aren*t I? And you don*t agree with what I*ve been saying.
[kharin] At the risk of rudeness, I must admit to being somewhat sceptical concerning your purported proximity, as it sounds disturbingly akin to *I have many gay friends.*
[Walpurgis] No offence, you don*t know me, so how do you trust such remarks? Yes, I have gay/bi friends, but also gay/bi interlocutors and a burgeoning gay love-affair. But it is the polyamorous people I know who prefer *queer*. And the WSB fan. And the Derek Jarman fan *L*
[kharin] Given the deliberately aggressive choice of phrase I would have thought that marginalisation and obscurity went with the territory.
[Walpurgis] Pissed off, marginalised groups have their uses.
[kharin] <snip> particularly given that sexuality does not serve as a predicate of viewpoint on either issue that you point to.
[Walpurgis] A fine point some groups (dare I use the word?) would do well to remember...
[Walpurgis] Perhaps not exclusion, but separatism might be worth it.
[kharin] I think this is where we differ; in my experience the problem with separatism is that it is almost entirely congruent to exclusion.
[Walpurgis] By this I meant that exclusion was the disenfranchisement of groups/persons within a society and separatism as the escape from said society into a different one. Sure, separatism involves exclusion, but from outside. Furthermore, separatists usually want said exclusion, whereas the excluded do not.
[Walpurgis] There are plenty of means. It depends on the degree of difference.
[kharin] Hmmm. So would a civil partnership scheme be equal to marriage then? Even if it offered all of the same rights ? Would it be accepted as such or regarded as a poor relation?
[Walpurgis] No, no and probably the latter. Like I said, I*m for gay marriages in Churches etc.
[Walpurgis] Equality does not imply universal conformity, only conformity to the laws that govern equality.
[kharin] I think this is a straw argument. While there will certainly be a gap between legal equality and *conformity* the two categories will also occupy much the same space.
[Walpurgis] Much? Perhaps only some. It would depend on the amount and extent of the laws.
[kharin] it seems less than accurate to suggest that difference and equality do not conflict in a great many ways.
[Walpurgis] Oh no, but they do. Striking a balance is what so much of politics is about for me.
[kharin] The gay scene can be deeply conformist. Liberated? The haircuts, the pecs, the clothes, the drinks, the music and dance, the vocabulary are worn like a uniform. In the streets of Soho and the juice-bars you might sometimes think that on the visible tip of the iceberg of gay culture, *out* homosexual men had broken one mould only to stamp upon themselves a stricter one. Some contemporary social commentary has noticed this.
[Walpurgis] Attack of the Clones.
[kharin] That is why I don*t use the term; it offers a somewhat hypocritical claim to exemption from certain norms that a group differs from and elides those that the groups assert itself. The process of determining what those norms might happen to be is a very arbitrary one indeed.
[Walpurgis] Fair point. *Group identification* seems more useful in this light - but only once one is clear on what a group is - which I am not right now. Perhaps *value identification* could be better, as values seem more isolable (and I expect these take a big role in some groups?). Are you familiar with theories of social capital? Perhaps an examination of where and how much social capital people invest would best illustrate how one understands groups?
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Kharin
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Re:brief critical analysis
« Reply #33 on: 2002-06-25 10:15:32 » |
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Quote:| It seems adequate for Durkheim. Could you explain why you don*t think it adequate? If you approached several people who considered themselves a group, how often could you convince them that they weren*t? |
Durkheim preceded social identity theory by more than few years, so I think we can do a bit better than that. The group consideration is an interesting one, but I would probably apply the categorization, identification and comparison criteria; they would have passed the first of these but probably not the second or third. I should probably also elaborate and observe that while what you describe could represent a starting point for group formation, it would not represent the outcome (in so far as belief would have to be substantiated by the above mechanisms). The same could be said of Sartre's theory in so far as a fused group is only capable in acting in a rudimentary manner.
Re: Sartre's theories of practical groups, I am familiar with them and am generally very symapthetic to Sartre, and in this context particularly sympathetic to any attempt to shift from viewing class as a consequence of social organization and to take attitudinal considerations into account. But the reason for doing so was that Marx's theories regarding social organisation lacked empirical evidence and were founded on assumptions; I'm not sure the same can't be said of Sartre. On a more general note, his theories seem excessively rigid to me.
Incidentally, if I may elaborate on my objection to the relation model, I should observe that I agree with you that the model is theoretically reasonable; my difficulty is that it conflicts with the research describing social organisation. For instance, Tajfel and Turner's research was followed by that of Diehl more recently, which found evidence for there being a positive relation between attitudinal (or some other) similarity and group formation, with dissimilarity leading to intergroup discrimination. This would seem to leave little scope for the relational model as I understood it. There are other studies to the same effect. That discrepancy leaves me very sceptical, certainly, but also slightly nervous. By and large, I tend to agree with Friedrich Hayek that the totalitarian disasters that have occurred when utopians attempt to redesign society according to their rational plan shows just how little they knew about the workings of the complex system of rules on which the social order is based. One cannot base social groupings on fictional categories of being.
Quote:| What do you consider an attribute? (Race? Class? Gender? Ethnicity? Football team?). Do people only relate if they share common attributes? If this is your argument, it seems fair to a point. Some commonality would be necessary for relation, but would that be anything more than a form of communication? |
Difference is (as we have, I think, agreed) an arbitrary signifier and potentially any of those would be viable categories (one thing to note is that difference is unavoidable and indeed desirable in a pluralist society; it is what I would call the fetishisation of difference which seems a source of concern to me, wherein certain forms of difference are privileged over others and to the exclusion of others. My feeling is that race and gender certainly qualify for that As you have indicated forms of difference intersect; the recognition of this is important is crucial for any notion of pluralism, and that this fetishisation serves as a obstacle to that. At the risk of labouring the metapor, it comes back to the notion of the fusion of horizons).
Perhaps coming back to a Virian perspective here would help. If I may quote Richard Dawkins:
Quote:One of the more frightening aspects of human nature* is a tendency to gravitate towards 'Us' and against 'Them'. Worse, Us versus Them disputes have a natural tendency to reach down the generations, leading to vendettas of frightening historical tenacity. Where labels are not provided to feed our natural divisiveness, we manufacture them. Children separate out into gangs, often with distinguishing labels. In certain districts of Los Angeles, a young person innocently sporting the wrong brand of trainers is in danger of being shot. Experiments have been done in which children, with no particular reason to sort themselves into gangs, are provided with, say, green or blue labels. In short order, enmities spring up between the greens and the blues: fierce loyalties to one's own colour, vendettas against the other. These can become surprisingly vicious. That's what happens when you don't even try to segregate children. Now, imagine that you deliberately stamp a green or a blue label on a child at birth. Send this child to a blue school and that child to a green
school. Encourage green boys to assume that they will grow up to marry green girls, while blue girls will marry blue boys. Take for granted that, the moment they have a baby of their own, it too must have the same coloured label tied around its neck. Passed on down the generations, what is all
that a recipe for? Do I need to spell it out? |
* Regrettably the essentialist term would appear warranted.
I would incidentally be interested to hear how the critique of UTism (see FAQ section of this site) seems to you.
Quote:| I agree, this is fine. I don*t think one can ignore a writers life and how it influences their work. Biography seems entirely relevant. |
In practice, I have always considered the Barthes critique of the author less than convincing (Foucault is more subtle; one could argue the author function to be vital for consideration in a capitalist society from his perspective), especially given that most schools of criticism bring in some form of extra-textual element (historicist, psychological, feminist etc) which do not seem different in kind to me, and which would equally be rejected from a purist stance.
Quote:| I think you provide it. You say that language can be used for political purposes. |
I think I had that in mind more as a point of etiquette (recgnising the distinction between langue and parole). If someone speaks to you in German it would seem rude to reply in Russian.
Quote:| For example, the masculinisation of the xtian god seems to be informed by patriarchal ideology. |
Once upon a time there was a chicken and an egg. The chicken looks ruffled and outraged while the egg is leaning back and smoking (C) Hermit, 2001. Given that xtianity is a patriachal religion trying to feminise the xtian god would be much like an unsharpened pencil: quite pointless.
Quote:| Here is the feedback loop. how do attitudes change if the language that expresses them is not changing too? Isn*t use of s/he just such change? |
I think this just returns us to Derrida's notion of our inability to step outside language, and my comments regarding Searle and Rorty (which, while not suggesting that we can step outside language per se, would seem to allow for language being a rather more porous category). That said, given the arbitrary relation between sign and signifier the disjunction between language and thought seems quite simple to me. For example, a term like 'mankind' has obvious gender biases, but with an arbitrary relation there is really no reason why the term cannot be used in a gender neutral context; as indeed it is in practice. There is also the consideration that one will almost certainly have reached the conclusion for the need for linguistic change through the extant structures of language, which would seem to point to a way out of the posited circle.
Quote:| Try thinking of a woman without thinking of her sex. |
Oddly enough, I do not find that especially difficult. I wonder why. 
Quote:| But it is the polyamorous people I know who prefer *queer*. |
That would make rather more sense; that is not something I would pretend to any great knowledge of (it sounds like so much hard work). That said, I wouldn't have thought of the term in that context, which may reflect my earlier comments concerning the excess elasticity of the term. I fear that I would have to beg to differ regarding the territory on Burroughs and Jarman...
Quote:| *Group identification* seems more useful in this light - but only once one is clear on what a group is - which I am not right now. |
It would probably be more helpful to focus less on what a group is, more on how it forms and maintains itself, since a group is more of a dynamic system than a static concept (which might be the root of this difficulty). This model would tend to entail; self classification as group member (not exclusive and entails switching between groups and individual), self-identification according to perception of common attributes,and comparison which acts as a norm reinforcement mechanism. Two ideas follow from this. One is positive distinctiveness. The idea is that people are motivated to see their own group as relatively better than similar (but inferior) groups. The other idea is negative distinctiveness, groups tend to mimimize the differences between the groups, so that our own group is seen favourably. See also Diehl above.
Quote:| Do you have any thoughts as to how gender itself is sustained, invented and reinforced in conversation? Perhaps this might illustrate gender differences in language use with greater clarity? |
Quote:| Mixed sex conversations tend to be dominated by men, who make the majority of interruptions, whereas the number of interruptions made by each participant is markedly more symmetrical in same sex conversations. Men tend to employ a number of strategies for controlling a conversation, for example altering the topic, whereas the more typically female strategy of asking tag questions (questions inobtrusively inserted at the end of a sentence) may well be designed to circumvent this. Women only succeeded in introducing new topics into the conversation for 36% of the time in one survey, until tag questions where deployed, at which point the success rate increased to 72%. This raises the rather thorny possibility that linguistic differences may be attributable to women using co-operative strategies where men use combative tactics. This could prove to account for features like the lower occurrence of swearing in women's speech (although this is dependent on context), and the greater prevalence of compliment exchanges in women's speech. Janet Holmes has analysed a corpus of four hundred and eighty four compliment exchanges in New Zealand, thereby establishing that 51% were between women, while a mere 14% were between men. 25% were given by men to women. Conversely men were more likely to make blunt declarations than women. |
As indicated previously, Janet Holmes is the leading authority on this, though her work has suffered from distortion and selective interpretation. Warning is given of unmarked snippage.
http://www.vuw.ac.nz/lals/lwp/research/gender.htm
Quote:Research into the existence of gendered speech, has tended to concentrate on identifying so-called distinguishing features of male and female communication, that fit into our stereotypes of the differences between men and women. In order to test whether this stereotype actually matched the reality of workplace communication, we studied speech of both male and female managers to see whether there was in fact a systematic difference between them. We found that there was just as much variation between women and women (and men and men) as there was between women and men, and the differences between male and female managing styles were more subtle than the above table would suggest:
At meetings, the chair tends to talk more than any other participant, whether the chair is male or female.
Women, as well as men, when in the position of chair, keep control of a meeting by summarising progress and making sure people agree with what has been decided.
Women are just as likely as men to use imperatives when giving directives
Contrary to popular belief, women use just as much humour as men, and use it for the same functions, to control discourse and subordinates and to contest superiors, although they are more likely to encourage supportive and collaborative humour,
Women use the same range of different linguistic devices to give directives as men.
Women managers seem to be more likely to negotiate consensus than male managers, they are less likely to just 'plough through the agenda', taking time to make sure everyone genuinely agrees with what has been decided.
In summary, gender does influence workplace communication, but it is not a one-to-one correspondence. |
My conclusion was that gender differentiation in speech was mainly attributable to power structures (both situational and societal) rather than gender per se. The issues tends to come down to whether are without linguistic resources because they are without power or because they need linguistic resources to increase their power. Taking that consideration into account does shift the debate considerably.
Quote:| The evidence would suggest that women are moving outside the co-operative stereotype, by adopting an assertive style in group interaction, and prosodic features more typical of men i.e. falls rather than rising intonation patterns, use of non-standard accents and swearing. |
Quote:| By this I meant that exclusion was the disenfranchisement of groups/persons within a society and separatism as the escape from said society into a different one. |
Could you elaborate on what you mean by society in that context? The term implies to me an elaboration of groups and community towards shared institutions and it's not clear if this is what you have in mind. More generally, the concept of stepping outside of society seems a difficult one to me.
I think it's worth recalling some examples of this in practice; groups of religious communities (i.e. the Amish), Neo-Nazis, and survivalists have effectively seceded from society in the US and establish differing ones. Disenfrachisement is rather a matter of perspective; most of these groups would regard themselves as dispossessed victims of a decadent and viciously left-wing society. My feeling is that if fragmentation progresses to that degree that this starts to occur balkanisation becomes possible and not in a metaphorical sense. That does not seem conducive to me to the interests of 'the disenfranchised,' even if their exclusion is actively sought rather than imposed.
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Kharin
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Re:brief critical analysis
« Reply #34 on: 2002-06-25 11:04:52 » |
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Quote:| You seem good at it, if somewhat pert |
There are those who would manners and morals as being contingent, in which case I was simply being amoral. I thought you'd approve
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Walpurgis
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Re:brief critical analysis
« Reply #35 on: 2002-06-26 07:05:49 » |
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[kharin] The group consideration is an interesting one, but I would probably apply the categorization, identification and comparison criteria;
Perhaps you could illustrate what the categorization, identification and comparison criteria are? I'm not at all familiar with the theorists you cite.
[kharin] I should probably also elaborate and observe that while what you describe could represent a starting point for group formation, it would not represent the outcome (in so far as belief would have to be substantiated by the above mechanisms). The same could be said of Sartre's theory in so far as a fused group is only capable in acting in a rudimentary manner. <snip>
Fair and interesting points.
[kharin] Difference is (as we have, I think, agreed) an arbitrary signifier and potentially any of those would be viable categories (one thing to note is that difference is unavoidable and indeed desirable in a pluralist society; it is what I would call the fetishisation of difference which seems a source of concern to me, wherein certain forms of difference are privileged over others and to the exclusion of others.
Agreed. Would this imply that gender inequality might vanish if gender distinctions (a fetishised difference if ever there was one!) were discouraged and androgyny (the lack of difference) encouraged? This might be done through acceptance/recognition of the intersexed, the vast similiarities/crossovers between female & male biology and (because of how closely it relates) the breakdown of the hegemony heterosexual and monogous behaviours and institutions...
[kharin] Dawkins Quote: <snip>
I've read similar, disheartening and convincing writings before, but thanks for the pointer.
[kharin] Regrettably the essentialist term would appear warranted.
Perhaps becuase there is an evolutionary need for such differentiation?
[kharin] I would incidentally be interested to hear how the critique of UTism (see FAQ section of this site) seems to you.
I'd agree there is a great deal of xenophobia and that is would have served some evolutionary purpose. However, xenophobia seems too strongly exclusive and competative, the human species seem to fall somewhere between co-operation and competition: co-opetition. Human groups won't always compete or form strict "us" "them" categorisations which result is strong exclusion. Neither will they always war with strangers just because they are strange. Cultures have always traded and mixed - it is one of the primary ways they have advanced.
Also, in our hunter-gathering days, cooperation would have been more likely than competition. War between such tribes would have caused too much death and without much medicine, even small wounds could have killed. Furthermore, war wouldn't have been necessary, as hunter-gatherer tribes would have had no territory, plentiful resources and little to fight over. Trading technology/produce would have been more likely. As we have lived like that for most of our evolutionary time, it is likely co-operation - or at least co-opetition has more influence over group behaviour than xenophobia and competition. This would have been encouraged when we bagan to live territorially and began to trade. Finally, xenophobia and "us"/"them" are never (as far as I'm aware) sufficient reasons for war or attitudes of total exclusion. These sentiments may be always present, but are part of a complex of other socio-political influences which results in their rise and fall in influence.
For example, immigration in the UK (pronounced "Uk!") has been pretty constant for years. Yet we are witnessing xenophobia in the popular press and popular feeling. This rise is probably due to the events of 9/11 and the following jingoism, as well as misinformation and sensationalism in the media. Some form of dissatisfaction/fear is xenophobias spur.
[Walpurgis] For example, the masculinisation of the xtian god seems to be informed by patriarchal ideology.
[kharin] Given that xtianity is a patriachal religion trying to feminise the xtian god would be much like an unsharpened pencil: quite pointless.
I agree. But my point wasn't about this issue, it was about how language is ideologically informed.
[kharin] For example, a term like 'mankind' has obvious gender biases, but with an arbitrary relation there is really no reason why the term cannot be used in a gender neutral context;
[Walpurgis] Agreed.
[kharin] as indeed it is in practice.
[Walpurgis] this is where I differ. I think most people consider "man" (human) to mean or imply the priority of "man" (male) in the same way that "Our Father" means male god to most people (even though he isn't meant to be). It's a matter of the impression women (especially young women) get from the wider use of male pronouns in language. Women are (as usual) less visable and thus, less important.
[Walpurgis] Try thinking of a woman without thinking of her sex.
[kharin] Oddly enough, I do not find that especially difficult. I wonder why.
So you can conceive of a woman without reference to her sex even though "women" integrally refers to her sex?
[kharin] That said, I wouldn't have thought of the term in that context, which may reflect my earlier comments concerning the excess elasticity of the term.
'Tis why many people echew labels.
[kharin] I fear that I would have to beg to differ regarding the territory on Burroughs and Jarman...
From what I have read, both of them loathed the term gay and accepted queer.
[kharin] It would probably be more helpful to focus less on what a group is, more on how it forms and maintains itself, since a group is more of a dynamic system than a static concept (which might be the root of this difficulty). <snip>
Agreed. Thought-provoking comments!
[Walpurgis] Do you have any thoughts as to how gender itself is sustained, invented and reinforced in conversation? Perhaps this might illustrate gender differences in language use with greater clarity?
Your reply to this question was interesting, but I was thinking about how gender is *created* in speech, rather than how gender influences speech. How people sustain/portray their gender in speech? How does a man express how he is a man? My understanding of "being a man" is that masculine identity is always subject to erosion or even destruction, it is constantly under attack and must be defended by reciprocating these attacks within the given hierarchic frameworks by gaining status by whatever means are acceptable. “Man” is an ideology which all men are striving to achieve, it has to be competatively accomplished. So how is this done in speech?
[Walpurgis] By this I meant that exclusion was the disenfranchisement of groups/persons within a society and separatism as the escape from said society into a different one.
[kharin] Could you elaborate on what you mean by society in that context? The term implies to me an elaboration of groups and community towards shared institutions and it's not clear if this is what you have in mind. More generally, the concept of stepping outside of society seems a difficult one to me.
I suppose the main point would be that government and law enforcement could not be able to influence a particular group. Only diplomacy/war would. Effectively, the seperatist group is like a nation-state, or at least extremely isolationist/evasive/illegal/militant?
[kharin] That does not seem conducive to me to the interests of 'the disenfranchised,' even if their exclusion is actively sought rather than imposed.
Probably.
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Kharin
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Re:brief critical analysis
« Reply #36 on: 2002-06-26 10:39:03 » |
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Quote:| So you can conceive of a woman without reference to her sex even though "women" integrally refers to her sex? |
How can a word integrally refer to something when the connection between that word and its signifier is arbitrary not integral?
Quote:| Would this imply that gender inequality might vanish if gender distinctions (a fetishised difference if ever there was one!) were discouraged and androgyny (the lack of difference) encouraged? |
Agree regarding fetished gender difference. I'm not sure what sort of mechanisms you have in mind for the encouragement though. It sounds like the sort of area where power constructs resistance...
Quote:| From what I have read, both of them loathed the term gay and accepted queer. |
Oh, I see what you mean. In the case of Jarman yes, though I think the situation with Burroughs is more complex; I see it as being less an acceptance of queer and more an evasion of the other. Certainly Burrough's sexual politics frequently seemed to ape the dynamics of masculine heterosexuality, up to and including attendant homophobia, though I'd need to dig notes out to elaborate on that. You have to recall that Burroughs was a lot more familiar with the word prior to its attempted redefinition.
Quote:| I suppose the main point would be that government and law enforcement could not be able to influence a particular group. |
The only example I can think of that would relate to the kind of area you have in mind would be Christiania [http://www.christiania.org/], though its history has been somewhat uncertain to the say the least, with considerable external influence being applied (not through what you would call and not without some success. Secession ultimately requires the consent or at least tolerance of that which is being seceded from, which by definition is something that a body like Christiania has lost the ability to guarantee.
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Walpurgis
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Re:brief critical analysis
« Reply #37 on: 2002-06-27 06:23:54 » |
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[kharin] How can a word integrally refer to something when the connection between that word and its signifier is arbitrary not integral?
The word "women" means a human with female genitals. The connection between word and being may be arbitrary, but the word still means "one who has female sex". So how can you think of the word without thinking of the sex - that is the word itself?
[kharin] I'm not sure what sort of mechanisms you have in mind for the encouragement though. It sounds like the sort of area where power constructs resistance...
What do you mean by this latter coment and why would it matter if it was? Are you against social change?
[kharin] Oh, I see what you mean. In the case of Jarman yes, though I think the situation with Burroughs is more complex; I see it as being less an acceptance of queer and more an evasion of the other. Certainly Burrough's sexual politics frequently seemed to ape the dynamics of masculine heterosexuality, up to and including attendant homophobia, though I'd need to dig notes out to elaborate on that. You have to recall that Burroughs was a lot more familiar with the word prior to its attempted redefinition.
I see. Yes, WSB was very butch. Except in bed, from what I've read.
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Kharin
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Re:brief critical analysis
« Reply #38 on: 2002-06-27 12:47:08 » |
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Quote:| The connection between word and being may be arbitrary, but the word still means |
I keep on wondering if you've actually realised the implications of that disjuncture, which seems to me to make the idea of univocality very difficult indeed; I fail to see how it is possible to agree that sign and signifier are not congruent and then assert that meaning must be fixed as if they were. While I disagree with Derrida that the disjuncture removes the referential aspect of language, I do agree that it destroys the univocal character of language. Language is differance and I would suggest that if the range of difference is not as great as you might wish then the issue is not with language itself but with the horizon of interpretation wherein language is instantiated. In that context, I don't see any impediment to the term assuming generic values (or fading from use completely). Again, it seems to me that language entails a demotic play of meanings rather than being a fixed and deterministic component in the order of being.
It might be of utility in what has become a very circular debate to try to map the philosophical concept of differance onto a cognitive model of language. I should observe that this is a rather difficult area, with convincing theories being few on the ground, but one of the less problematic models suggested an analogy with sets i.e. in this context terms like 'woman' and 'man' would be probably represented as overlapping sets respectively containing a mixture of gender specific and generic characteristics, and subdivided into smaller sets (lesbian, gay etc). Overall, though I suspect the sets would be reasonable small in my case, since I tend to think of gender as too excessively essentialist to be a terribly helpful concept.
Quote:| What do you mean by this latter coment and why would it matter if it was? Are you against social change? |
Being against social change is a bit like being against the tide. But I generally tend to be very sceptical of the degree to which it can be manufactured or imposed, though social structures can certainly be contested. By and large I tend to be Hayekian in such matters (http://hem.passagen.se/nicb/cons.htm), albeit a somewhat diffident one. Coercive attempts to induce social change on the part of institutions tend to manufacture resistance, which is likely to result in greater impediments to change than was originally the case. Attempts to manufacture social change leading to the Gordon rights being a reasonable historical example.
Quote:| I see. Yes, WSB was very butch. Except in bed, from what I've read. |
I suspect we may have read the same biography. Frankly, I'm still trying to expunge some of the descriptions from memory. The term 'whinnying' made a reprettably indelible impression.
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Hermit
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Re:brief critical analysis
« Reply #40 on: 2002-07-28 21:04:25 » |
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Posted by: cygnid Posted on: Today at 12:16:34
I take exception to being moderated. It is not appropriate to the pursuit at hand. I would nominate myself for sainthood. Through me all is truth. The only way for me to express that truth is a very big empty canvas where all can paint. That is why we have an Internet and that is why we should do away with facilitators.
Cygnid, please repost this message elsewhere as it will be deleted from this thread. Appropriate places might be under "Free for All" or on the main list at Virus 2002 .
The reason that these forums are moderated is to keep them on topic and structured in such a way as to make them readable to visitors.
Breaking in on a thread, with an off topic comment, rather than beginning your own is also considered impolite (and/or stupid).
Thank-you
Hermit
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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