Showing posts with label privilege. Show all posts
Showing posts with label privilege. Show all posts
Monday, August 29, 2011
Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Divison of Labour page 180
Monday, August 22, 2011
Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Divison of Labour page 35
Many feminists in the United States and Europe have, together with critical scientists and ecologists, begun to criticize the dualistic and destructive paradigm of Western science and technology. Drawing their inspiration from C.G. Jung's psychology, humanistic psychology, non-dualistic 'Eastern' spirituality, particularly Taoism and other oriental philosophies, they propose a new holistic paradigm, the New Age paradigm. This emphasis on the fact that in our world everything is connected with everything and influences everything is definitely an approach which goes along with much of the feminist rebellion and vision of a future society. However, if this desire to 'become whole' again, and to build bridges across all the cleavages and segmentations White Man has created is not to be frustrated again, it is necessary that the New Age feminists, the ec-feminists and others open their eyes and minds to the real colonies whose exploitation also guarantees them the luxury of indulging in 'Eastern spirituality' and 'therapy'. In other words, if the holistic paradigm is nothing but an affair of a new spiritualism or consciousness, if it does not identify and fight against the global system of capitalist accumulation and exploitation, it will end up by becoming a pioneering movement for the legitimization of the next round of the destructive production of capitalism. This round will not focus on the production and marketing of such crude material commodities as cars and refrigerators, but on non-material commodities like religion, therapies, friendship, spirituality, and also on violence and warfare, of course with the full use of the 'New Age' technologies.
Friday, August 19, 2011
Joanna Russ, "A Boy and His Dog: The Final Solution" in To Write Like a Woman: Essays in Feminism and Science Fiction, pages 71-72
It is nonsense to insist that the real danger in a tyrannical, self-hating, hypocritical, piously horrible society is pretty, scheming, little girls. The Nice Girl looks like the most sacred and the most privileged citizen of this ghastly community, but in reality her rights (as opposed to the rights of her owners) are nonexistent. In D. W. Griffith's Orphans of the Storm, for example, to lay a finger on Lillian Gish looks like a desecration, but she is far from being society or even a citizen of it; she has been invented, constructed, meant, put there in the film either to be raped or saved-from-rape--what other purpose can there possibly be for her unhuman helplessness and childishness? The Victorian gentlemen who so assiduously protected their daughters' maiden purity were not hypocrites when they visited whorehouses stocked with twelve-year-old girls; they were simply acting on the identical assumption about the high value of maiden purity. In such a setup, pretty girls are about as much privileged citizens as a diamond ring is a privileged citizen. Like money or jewels, women are counters for use in business or warfare between men. Punk loners (who are much more part of "society"...) can go on terrifying or killing waitresses or cheerleaders forever under the impression that they're heroically attacking society...
Confusing Nelson Rockefeller with his car is a useful delusion to inculcate in punks; this way they attack the car instead of the man. After all, if the punks ever found out the car was only a possession, there might be real trouble. But as long as movies assume that the use of women to bind men to respectability is an instinct or a scheme by women (who must act through men in order to attain any power or safety), and not a circumstance set up by powerful men, rebels can expend their emotion on reincarnations of the Bitch Goddess forever.
The war between fathers and sons is as chronic a conflict in patriarchy as the war between classes (that is, between upper-class and lower-class men), though not nearly as revolutionary in its potential. In both conflicts women are useful scapegoats, blamable and punishable for everything. After all, Son will eventually make it to the state of Father and will have his own Daughter/Wife he can own ("protect") from other Fathers, a Daughter he can give to another Son as payment for continuing the status quo. Son can even be counted on to punish Daughter if Daughter gets out of hand. Thus a real alliance between Daughter and Son is made eternally impossible, and luckily so, for such an alliance would be almost as dangerous for patriarchy as one between Daughter and Mother. Between classes, scapegoats are even more useful: Lower-class Man is not going to make it at all, i.e., he will never replace Upper-class Man; so using Lower/Upper-class Woman as scapegoat both distracts him from the real situation and bribes him to endure it.
The evils of female sexuality and the obligatory punishment of its carriers is the grand, eternally useful scapegoat of Western patriarchy. It is the one topic on which Fathers and Sons, Upper-class Men and Lower-class Men can heartily agree. And they can agree (and collude) while enjoying the comforting illusion that they are engaged in dangerous, revolutionary activities.
Confusing Nelson Rockefeller with his car is a useful delusion to inculcate in punks; this way they attack the car instead of the man. After all, if the punks ever found out the car was only a possession, there might be real trouble. But as long as movies assume that the use of women to bind men to respectability is an instinct or a scheme by women (who must act through men in order to attain any power or safety), and not a circumstance set up by powerful men, rebels can expend their emotion on reincarnations of the Bitch Goddess forever.
The war between fathers and sons is as chronic a conflict in patriarchy as the war between classes (that is, between upper-class and lower-class men), though not nearly as revolutionary in its potential. In both conflicts women are useful scapegoats, blamable and punishable for everything. After all, Son will eventually make it to the state of Father and will have his own Daughter/Wife he can own ("protect") from other Fathers, a Daughter he can give to another Son as payment for continuing the status quo. Son can even be counted on to punish Daughter if Daughter gets out of hand. Thus a real alliance between Daughter and Son is made eternally impossible, and luckily so, for such an alliance would be almost as dangerous for patriarchy as one between Daughter and Mother. Between classes, scapegoats are even more useful: Lower-class Man is not going to make it at all, i.e., he will never replace Upper-class Man; so using Lower/Upper-class Woman as scapegoat both distracts him from the real situation and bribes him to endure it.
The evils of female sexuality and the obligatory punishment of its carriers is the grand, eternally useful scapegoat of Western patriarchy. It is the one topic on which Fathers and Sons, Upper-class Men and Lower-class Men can heartily agree. And they can agree (and collude) while enjoying the comforting illusion that they are engaged in dangerous, revolutionary activities.
Monday, August 15, 2011
Joanna Russ, "SF and Technology as Mystification," in To Write Like a Woman: Essays in Feminism and Science Fiction pages 33-34
Talk about technology is a cognitive addiction. That is, such talk (like much in academia) purports to satisfy certain cognitive cravings that spring from issues central to all of us in our own lives, but it does not do so. Instead, it follows the pattern of brief palliation followed by increasing dissatisfaction and--usually--the academic equivalent of spin-offs: books proliferate, papers are given, journals are edited, other symposia are planned, but somehow nothing gets settled and eventually people drift on to other concerns--not because the subject has been exhausted, but because it has somehow disappeared.
...certainly, when I recall my three experiences with formal symposia on "Technology And" (usually the humanities or literature), nobody involved in those was stupid. Yet what is striking about the formal and informal occasions alike is the exclusion of both subject-matter and people: there was no economics, there was little sociology, there was little real history, there was no political analysis of any kind. There were almost no women and there were few references to works by women, literary or scientific, and no references at all to women's work. And, as in Star Wars, there were practically no non-white faces.
I believe these exclusions have a good deal to do with the choice of "technology" as a subject and the way in which non-discourse about this non-subject keeps occurring. That is, in all these discussions the conversation occurs as if we were in a heaven of abstract discourse in which ideas develop autonomously and influence other ideas without the slightest connection to the real conditions of the lives of the people who are having the ideas. It is what I think Marx would call ahistorical talk. It is certainly talk that pretends to be apolitical. And, of course, the one thing left out of all these discussions is real technology.
...certainly, when I recall my three experiences with formal symposia on "Technology And" (usually the humanities or literature), nobody involved in those was stupid. Yet what is striking about the formal and informal occasions alike is the exclusion of both subject-matter and people: there was no economics, there was little sociology, there was little real history, there was no political analysis of any kind. There were almost no women and there were few references to works by women, literary or scientific, and no references at all to women's work. And, as in Star Wars, there were practically no non-white faces.
I believe these exclusions have a good deal to do with the choice of "technology" as a subject and the way in which non-discourse about this non-subject keeps occurring. That is, in all these discussions the conversation occurs as if we were in a heaven of abstract discourse in which ideas develop autonomously and influence other ideas without the slightest connection to the real conditions of the lives of the people who are having the ideas. It is what I think Marx would call ahistorical talk. It is certainly talk that pretends to be apolitical. And, of course, the one thing left out of all these discussions is real technology.
Labels:
-joanna russ,
capitalism,
context,
economy,
exclusion,
faulty logic,
privilege,
race,
reproduction,
technology,
women,
work
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Joanna Russ, "SF and Technology as Mystification," in To Write Like a Woman: Essays in Feminism and Science Fiction pages 32-33
In the physiological model of addiction there is an increasing spiral of physical need; in the cultural model, an increasing spiral of what I shall call (for want of a better term) emotional need... In Star Wars the need is for self-worth and pleasure (I believe this is what the "fun" represents). The means uses to achieve these are, roughly, sexism, racism, heterosexism, competition, and macho privilege. But this kind of privilege is exactly what is producing a world in which most of the viewers of Star Wars do not have the self-worth and the access to excitement and pleasure that they need.
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