<nettime> Identity and difference

Dear Justin

Was Karl Marx an idealist or a materialist? I'm perfectly happy to leave that for you and others to decide. Because I'm a pragmatist and my ideas are pragmatist and the rest is just wordplay to me. I'm interested in factual truth and in whether something works or does not work. I'm also interested in opinion being challenged on its own merit. Therefore I radically separate person and opinion. The whole idea that who speaks affects the value of what is being said is just value relativism of the worst kind. I know this is a popular kindergarden game among identitarians of both the extreme right and the extreme left (as if "being seen and heard" must be divided equally among some five-year-olds). Because I can see no other value in this habit than infantile attention-seeking. Which means it is in itself victim-seeking and therefore victimhood-encouraging and certainly not heroic and empowering for anybody. And I can't think of anything less Marxist than that. As I said, identitarianism is Rousseau through and through. How it even sneaked into "The Left" beats me.

Everybody should radically be allowed to speak and each argument should be judged on its own merits, not according to who forwards it. That strengthens the overall the debate the most. That is if you're interested in debates having successful and productive outcomes. At least I am. Anything else is just a waste of valuable time. So does race exist? Yes, it does, undeniably, but only as a social ghost. My brother and I had no idea one of us was black and of us was white until we where 14. We had no idea we ought to have cared. Now we can spend our entire lives going on and on about social ghosts and, like David pointed out, end up being the very people who defend and keep the social ghosts the most and the longest. However I find that tragic. I want to move on. And class being firmly tied to capital and power is therefore the factual overarching category under which we can then deal with minor issues like race and gender. Effectively. Now if that is not a materialist argument as much as an activist one, then I don't know what is. If anything is idealist and not materialist it must certainly be the obsession with social ghosts. But sure, the I and the M labels are yours to decide. I could not care less.

Best intentions

Alexander

Den fre 2 nov. 2018 kl 04:00 skrev Justin Charles <[email protected]>:

Coming in late to this thread but the anti-identity current that's growing more and more prevalent on the left lately seems to be somewhat in opposition to contrary to materialism. To say that "class is class and only class has universal validity" strikes me as pretty idealist, not materialist. OneWhile race may not exist to Alexander Bard and Candace Owens, I'd argue that maybe it doesn't exist for them because materially it need not. Alexander is a white man. Candace Owens, while a black woman, has a class position that allows her to skip some over much of what it looks like to be black for most black people, who aren't well-compensated conservative (or liberal) commentators. Most black people's class position is deeply intertwined with the color of their skin. I don't think I need to go into the historical reasons for this. I'd also say that Asad Haider's book was in no way championing victimhood. If that's what one takes away from it then they've read an entirely different book than I did.

On Sun, Oct 28, 2018 at 12:05 PM tbyfield <[email protected]> wrote:
Ian, this idea of 'civility' should be unpacked a bit, because the ~word
lumps together a disparate range of concerns. At its worst, a lot of
babble about civility boils down to is tone-policing, which relies on
etiquette as an all-purpose tool for micromanaging rhetoric — and in
doing so, limiting and even delegitimizing positions of every type
(subjective, relational, political, whatever). In other contexts —
notably, in 'centrist' politics in the US — it serves as a rationale
for institutionalist pliability: 'bipartisan' cooperation, etc. But
those two uses are very different from its function as a foil for the
frightening prospect of outright political violence. These different
strands, or layers if you like, are hopelessly tangled, and that
confusion in itself has serious consequences — hence the culturalist
use of the word 'strategy,' which often is used to get at the nebulous
realm in which individual behavior aligns with (or 'is constitutive of')
abstract, impersonal forces. That's a very roundabout way to get at the
obvious problem, which is the direct way that increasingly uncivil
political discourse foments violence. And, in a way, that's the problem:
the left's path for translating ideals into political practices is
hobbled and misdirected at every stage, whereas for the right it's
becoming all too direct.

My gut sense is that Land is symptomatic of the left's repudiation of
force — violence — as a legitimate form of politics. Some, like him,
sense that and embark a theoretical trajectory that tacitly accepts or
even actively embraces violence. I'll leave that there, because I don't
want to debate it or even to see a debate about it on this list. Nettime
is fragile, and decades of accumulated effort could be poisoned with a
few, um, 'uncivil' messages. There was a time when the solution was
widely said to be more speech, but at a time when 'more speech' means
trollbot networks that systematically and strategically subvert civil
contexts I think that rule is more problematic than ever.

As for Bard, whenever his mail appears in inbox my first reaction is
"When's the new book coming out?" But that's a rhetorical question —
no answer needed, thanks.

Cheers,
Ted

On 28 Oct 2018, at 10:48, Ian Alan Paul wrote:

> Brett - I don't think that the problem of the Left is that we don't
> spend
> enough time with people who think it's worthwhile to discuss the
> potential
> virtues of "Candace Owens, Nick Land and/or Adolf Hitler." If
> anything, the
> Left needs to thoroughly rid itself of the liberal and depoliticizing
> notion that we should all simply get along in the name of preserving
> civility, esp. in a historical moment while fascist gangs are
> literally
> roaming the streets beating up migrants, synagogues are being shot up,
> and
> pipe bombs are being mailed to politicians.
>
> I don't think Alexander's ideas are worth engaging with or even
> refuting to
> be entirely honest, as I hope is obvious to most people on Nettime by
> this
> point. We live in times that are too extreme and urgent to expend any
> attention or energy dialoguing with disingenuous apologists for the
> Right .
<...>
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Justin Charles
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