Posted by Bitch Lab at 6:02 pm and filed under Blogoliciousville, Politics, So 1998, Theory ::
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For what itâs worth, I donât like Bitch Lab, I donât read her, I donât think sheâs very bright, and I think the main thing she piggybacked on recently was a comment thread to a post she didnât author. Nice appropriation, that.
So: Donât like Bitch Lab? Join the club, and donât read her. Read the women she rips off instead. Theyâre better.
So: Donât like Bitch Lab? Join the club, and donât read her. Read the women she rips off instead. Theyâre better.
02-12-2006
Just go ahead and bitch
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AHAHAHAHAHHA. That’s my favourite part of this post.
Seriously, though, good questions raised.
I’ve been unimpressed by Kos since before his “sanctimonious women’s studies set” comment. I would have thought that high school had taught us all that “meritocracy” is BS and that it’s all just one big popularity contest, anyway.
Although, I suppose that I like to think that I’ve earned even my paltry status in the feminist blogsphere because of my writing. Then again, I harbor no illusions that, at the end of the day, getting linked in big name blogs and getting my posts out there in carnivals account for a lot of my visibility. And if A-List bloggers like Kos think that they got where they did just because they can spin prose, well, they’re either lying or deluded (or possibly both).
I must have messed up the blockquote tag. o.O Only the first part of that is supposed to read as a quote… heh.
heh. I can edit it. sad, though, it was such a cheap shot on my part. I knew what he really meant. I couldn’t help myself.
Here’s the silliest ass thing of all: if everyone linked to everyone else, the existing hierarchy would pretty much stay in place — because it’s relative.
:)
So, it really isn’t about linking in the end. It’s about the social construction and legitimation of scarcity. But that wouldn’t be anything a right-minded defender of the system would want to discuss. ha! It would be like asking “what would happen if…. ” when thinking about the plot in The Terminator.
oh. And the other thing I was thinking, the whole article — its assumptions — takes for granted the legitimacy of a narrowly defined ‘politics” or ‘political practice.’
Dkos surely does. For him, it’s about winning elections. And the content of his blog is zeroed in on yakking about the races, promoting candidates, promoting campaign issues, battling the enemy.
And he wants to imagine that the only legitimate way to build this “Progressive” community is via this narrowly defined political practice. Thus those blogs that focus primarily on doing the same are considered legimitately part of the ‘political community’.
But, can a social movement for real progressive change rest only on this narrow conception of politics? How does such a narrow concpetion of politics foster community and solidarity? I don’t think it does — not for the long haul at any rate.
A progressive politics needs story tellers. It needs shared symbols which express, in crystallized for, those stories. Those story tellers speak from the voices of those who feel the burning edge of the need for social change.
Those story tellers seem to me to almost always emanate from the impassioned heart of those who feel most oppressed or who can, somehow, identify with them and give voice to that pain — and that desire.
Those stories are what the whole “values” debate is really all about. Those stories are what Mr. Framing (I’ve forgotten his name) is really talking about. But things he talks about don’t inspire the people who struggle. He only wants to get people to pull levers in voting booths. He only wants to bring USers to a point where more people thinkt he Democrats are more appealing than the Republicans.
Real social change — which is what I thought a progressive supports — is something that needs to be sustained by larger mythic stories of what’s wrong with contemporary life and what we can do to change. Those mythic stories we tell ourselves tell us why we struggle. They tell us why we’re doing this. They tell us why we keep fighting, even when we lose, even when we think nothing’s ever going to change. Those stories nourish us and reinvigorate us. They keep us fighting when the going gets tough. They connect us to a past through a present and onward toward an imagined future.
Ahem.
Sorry. There’s this weird thing that takes over me sometimes and I sound like a durn fool.
So what was i saying? Oh yeah, by ignoring people, those who speak from something other than a narrowly defined notion of political practice, then it seems to me you are just shooting yourself in the foot in more ways than just fostering resentment. You’re ignoring the very people who can build a stronger and more solidaristic — if always agonistic — social movement that can be sustained . One that can be sustained, not just through the long, arduous process of ‘winning’ but also through the process of maintaining those gains.
Finally, this is what feminists theorists have been saying bout the problem with a narrowly defined notion of what counts as politics. This is what communitarian theorists have been saying about what invigorates and sustains civil society, the necessary ground of a substantive political life in which we don’t just pull levers in voting booths, but actively participate in the very decision-making processes that shape our lives.
>A progressive politics needs story tellers. It needs shared symbols which express, in crystallized for, those stories. Those story tellers speak from the voices of those who feel the burning edge of the need for social change.
Word.
[...] Without more verbiage then, a comment from Bitch|Lab that says it most beautifully: Bitch | Lab ĂÂť Blog Archive ĂÂť Flicked off [...]
You can also cut and paste thus,
“LetââŹâ˘s give more voice to African American lesbians.”
That felt good. And it’s right.
In this vein, check out The Blog this week in New York Magazine: http://www.newyorkmag.com
It’s not as expressly political, but it touches on similar issues.
[...] Chaudry’s reply to this is here. Reactions from Bitch Lab are also well worth reading. [...]
[...] Chaudry’s reply to this is here. Reactions from Bitch Lab are also well worth reading. [...]