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Reminded In a nutshell Radical Women of Color Carnival #1
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For what it’s worth, I don’t like Bitch Lab, I don’t read her, I don’t think she’s very bright, and I think the main thing she piggybacked on recently was a comment thread to a post she didn’t author. Nice appropriation, that.
So: Don’t like Bitch Lab? Join the club, and don’t read her. Read the women she rips off instead. They’re better.
So: Don’t like Bitch Lab? Join the club, and don’t read her. Read the women she rips off instead. They’re better.
01-18-2007
Just go ahead and bitch
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Cool. Thanks for this. No time to read and digest the essay right now, but I’m cutting and pasting and printing so I’ll remember later.
I’ve always been baffled by people who run away from a good argument (i.e. intellectual debate) with the occasional good jab thrown in. Then again, I’m a big fan of William Hazlitt’s writing, so I guess that says a lot about me.
As far as countering the verbally abusive right, I think Keith Olbermann is the closest public acknowledgement we have to a meta-flame artist. I enjoyed that article. Some questions arise about the audience’s recognition of these tactics as targeting effigies rather than the people themselves — or the audience’s denial of the effigy to hate the real thing conveniently.
Queer Dewd, I’m not sure how on earth the things that have been written in the exchanges I was referring to are supposed to measure up to Milton, Hazlitt, or Shelley. That is a truly ridiculous comparison; incoherent, knee-jerk bashing is actually the opposite of effective rhetoric, because it’s easy to resist, to mock, and to refute.
Anyhow, my full response is here for ya.
JK
if you’re going to characterize a debate, it might be really useful to actually cite the passages that offend you as examples of “incoherent knee jerk bashing”. Little Light? Belledame? Blackamazon? Heart? Who fits in that category? Commenters? Which blog post and which ones?
as for the rest, I think you went off the deepend interpreting a neutral link to your post as something that made me think of Hawkes as some kind of attack.
Tres odd.
You know, I understand the desire for some citations here, but I’m just not going to do it. The request is reasonable, but the outcome would be me making a lot of people even more pissed. Que será. I gave Blackamazon a favorable mention and a link because she deserves it (not that I have any particular weight in the blogosphere).
I disagreed with the Hawkes, and I thought he (and you) did a pretty good job outlining the position I disagree with. I wrote that your post was “sort of” in response to mine because I did find it mostly neutral in tone.
…but, you disagreed with what I was saying in my own earlier post. That’s all I took from what you posted.
Well, you criticized several things, none of which appear to be at issue in the essay, except on a too casual, sloppy reading. Moreover, characterizing my posish as one in agreement with Hawkes is also a sloppy reading.
My positionis that, if one is going to characterize others’ posts as kneejerk flaming and attach a value judgment (bad) to what they’ve written, then it behooves the person doing the charactertizing to make clear who and what they find problematic. Otherwise, no one learns a thing. We speak of flaming and may have two different definitions. E.g., I found your post full of precisely the kind of unethical discourse which I think is more unproductive to debate than when someone hurls around the sentence, “you’re a fucking asshole”.
More on what I mean by that this weekend.
By the way, Hawkes makes perfectly clear how Milton and Shelley are related toflame fests. Milton was engaged in some seriously vicious ad hominem attacks in his pamphlet war. Indeed, he names being any kind of conservative at all, a moral defect of the person. Later, he attributes the viciousness of his arguments to the death of his opponent in that rhetorical war — and is not ashamed of this.
Sylvia is right, though, that Hawkes needs to flesh out precisely what he means by attacking someone’s rhetoric as opposed to their person. Is he saying that it’s OK to engage in logical fallacy? I’m not sure. If all he’s saying is that people should keep things to the level of intellectual debate about ideas, as opposed to attacks on persons (such as attacks on motivations, intellect, morality, etc.) then this seems, uh, odd to say the least. Those debate rules are well-established.
By what standards was what I wrote a sloppy reading? All of the paraphrases are clearly linked to points made once or several times in Hawkes — for example, about the “bourgeois” nature of the critique of flaming. Furthermore, what subject-position are you assuming for yourself here? You say that people have a right to be angry, you quote the entirety of the Hawkes, and you start with a link to my post. I’m sure you’d like to insert whatever disjunctions please you into that apparent chain of argument, but that’s pretty much revisionism.
Yeah, I grasp that Milton is Hawkes’s standard-bearer for ad hominem attacks, but the fact that he sees relatively little difference between Milton and Limbaugh is amazing to me. Furthermore, no matter who we’re talking about, the spectacle of somebody congratulating themselves on somebody else’s death is unappealing. The fact that they are exulting shamelessly changes nothing, though it does beg the question why.
Maybe the rules of impersonal debate are well-established — by whom? some academic theorist like Habermas? — but they haven’t been followed in the debate over LittleLight’s post.
I’m totally lost. Just tell me: am I being flamed? Or am I being critiqued for flaming sloppily? Because, it’s all about Me, you know.
Hey Belledame. It definitely wasn’t all about you, and I mean that in a good way.
First things first: from what I can tell, you are right about Heart’s blog, and you are right about the LittleLight post.
In a limited way, when I wrote the first post on my blog (the one the Dewd’s linking to), I did have in mind your using phrases like “shitbag” to describe Heart (in the comments section for LittleLight’s public service announcement post).
My post came out of a bunch of discussions that were mostly not conducted on blogs. These were discussions over email, phone, IM, and in person, with people I know from the real world and from blogging. They were discussions about the remarks of a guy called “Steven Augustine” on a litblog called The Valve. They were discussions about the Twisty transhating scandal. And they were discussions about Heart’s response to LittleLight.
In every case, the response was basically the same: once the argument reached a certain level of nastiness, because of language, personal attacks, and so on, the people I was talking to stopped caring about either side.
Furthermore, I was talking to blog readers who were scared to comment because of what they thought the reaction might be.
Since I don’t think “fighting words” are actually necessary when the argument is so open-and-shut, as it was here, I was disappointed to find that that style was leading people to drop threads. I also had a selfish interest: I was spending time trying to write thoughtful stuff for threads that were losing readers because of the way the debate was being conducted.
So, when I wrote my first post, it was out of the belief that we could prove Heart wrong without making it easy for her or her readers to dismiss us, and without making some percentage (who knows how many, I sure don’t) of readers recoil. Especially since this came hard on the heels of the Twisty scandal. One solution is to despise those readers: call them weak, or anxious, or casual, or what-have-you. But I would rather have them on board, if that is possible without compromising my ideas.
As for the second post, “On Pitilessness,” that was more or less a response to Dewd’s re-post of the Hawkes essay, and I was thinking out loud about debating style more generally, as Hawkes had done.
I didn’t think you were being sloppy, and, once again, agreed with the substance of your response (”Dear Heart”).
technically, if I recall correctly, I was calling luckynkl a shitbag, who not only was the charming person who said all transwomen were “nutjobs” who belong in straightjackets, were likely to assault real women if they were god forbid allowed to use the womens’ restroom in public, but just then had taken the opportunity to drive by and attempt to shoot another poison dart at LL -in that thread, on her own blog.-
not that i feel particularly bad if i did call Heart a “shitbag,” mind you.
i appreciate the general sentiment that casual bystanders get turned off when the language gets too strong, but you know: i’m not always playing to the balcony. sometimes i am writing on behalf of people I care about, who have been hurt by the shitbag in question, to express my own anger and solidarity, in my not-particularly-diplomatic way. Sometimes there is a time for reasonably engaging something/someone on an intellectual plane, their ideas, you know; sometimes an appeal to empathy -might- work (”say, you really hurt this person there”); when neither of those have demonstrably had any effect whatsoever on a given individual, that is when i reach for the flametorch. also, it makes ME feel better.
what can i tell you. QD’s made herself pretty clear about her wanting to engage arguments rather than say engage in armchair psychology at least on her blog, and i am mindful of it.
but also, i agree with her here in saying that there are worse sins than simply saying a straightforward, “fuck you, asshole, your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries.”
and sometimes, a shitbag is just a shitbag.
No no Belle, Heart is a polite shitbag, which is so much frakkin better of course, because she hasn’t broken the middle class rule about blatant facism versus it’s more aesthetically pleasing crypto-hyphenated form.
That’s sort of what I mean when I say middle class culture contains nothing that isn’t focused on oppression - that’s all there seems to be to middle class cultures aside from the consumer culture passtime of property aquisition, just manners to maintain the crypto-facism and the downpressing of the wogitariat.
All other forms of culture enjoyed by the middle classes seem to predate the “white” (european) middle classes or are co-options of working class culture.
QD:
Apparently, if you are an aggressive woman prone to a little rage, you need therapy. Or so it has been implied.
I think most people, initially, try to be civil. I’ve tried. But when you don’t get civil in return? Let them eat flame. Hearts LL post is a great example. I commented over there and asked some questions and got sarcasm and wank in return by a couple of her regulars. Which leaves me oh-so predisposed to be civil to them in the future, as it is obvious they themselves do not comprehend the word and thus do not really deserve the same treatment. And we won’t even get into things spouted by the likes of Pony, ect, in the past, nor do a recap on the wasp issue. After all that BS, why the hell should any of us care about being civil to people who have proven themselves incapable of extending the same effort?
Some people really are just shitbags, and when this is proven, well…the truth hurts.
Besides, sometimes we all just like a good fight.
besides the overall shitbagginess, with the exception of Heart, who whatever else I don’t think she’s stupid, the commenters there…yyyyeah.
pony is busy trying to explain to Chris Clarke about MLA standards of plagiarism; and someone called Aletha just answered me, quite seriously, when i told her–n response to her complaints that there is a distinction between “transwoman” and “woman” and she basically objects to LL using the latter label, is the gist, I said, well, I don’t like you calling yourself Aletha on account of my friend Aletha had it first; so, I’m just gonna call you “Binky,” ‘k?–that she severely doubts that my friend Aletha could have invented the name, as she knows a number of Alethas herself, and she’s had the name for almost 30 years, so there, too.
can’t argue with that logic!
BD:
Well, we are…them…you know… I also love this new “real, born women bonding over the power to give birth thing”…cause you know, transwomen cannot, so, not REAL women….wonder if they consider born women who cannot have children real women or not? So tasty a topic I had to post on it and everything. Now, I turn once again to basking in the glow of the sisterhood and wondering if I need a shrink because I am an asshole….
So what’s the relation between this post & “Empathy, Sympathy, & Reintegrative Shaming” (1/12)?
awww. KH. you don’t thinking i posted the quote in “internally riven” for nothing, didja? :)
Busted! Queer Dewd is Walt Whitman! He is large, he contains multitudes.
KH –
ewwwwwwwwww. walt whitman, i am not internally riven over at all. lovely words, pretty much detest the philosophy of expressive individualism underpinning it. *shudder*.
please don’t try to convince me otherwise. you’re either with ME or against ME. i throw down the gauntlet on that one! along with the word utilize. oh, and “cross-functional teams”. Also? “return on investment”. and team player.
and anyway, it is true that the relationship between all of it is the same ambiguity toward the issue expressed by Hawkes who, out of temperment, tends to be adament about the ambiguity. HA!
e.g., the rel. is one of, “but then there’s this….” to think about. but it does need to be fleshed out.
but it doesn’t need it so much that i do not attend to targeting my resume to a job a recruiter called about today.
mum’s the word on the rest since the gods i don’t believe in hate me.
BTW, one important thing to note is that calling someone names is not ad hominem attack.
quickie for JK since this Queer Dewd needs a job more than she needs to spend time giving your post the thorough critique it so richly deserves.
Hawkes’ use of the term ‘bourgeois’ occurs in two places:
1. He says that he had a suspicion that the overweening concern with the attack on the individual is a preoccupation that arose with capitalism, the bourgeoisi, and the Liberal Enlightenment. Makes sense when you consider that such events fundamentally changed the way we think about the individiaul and hir relationship to society — and to knowledge, truth, justice, etc.
He says (and wrongly I believe) that such concerns are historical and will go away b/c of the internet. Internesting enough, he does not say that this concern is and must be determined by the economy, but that it is transient *within* this particular formation of class society.
As a side note, to engage in Marxist criticism — to identify something as emerging with capitalism as a bourgeois value for instance — it does not necessarily follow that one must toss out the baby with the disposable diaper. Bourgeois isn’t an epithet, necessarily. It can simply be used descriptively. A close reading of something as straightforward as the Manifesto makes this clear: e.g., the division of labor is both a force for good and ill. To assume a one sided reading from a Marxist, would, I think be a grave mistake until you know the fuller context of their thought.
2. The second point is with regard to bourgeois standards of decorum. I read no value judgment there, that , as you suggest, because it’s bourgeois then it’s bad.
To suggest, as you have, that this is Hawkes’ position is a sloppy reading. He’s situating his comments in terms of the situation radicals find ourselves: dealing with the Limbaughs and Cutty Sarks and Ice Cubes of the day (circa 1994). What others have called the ‘coarsening of public discourse’. (you can see something similar in Critique of the Gotha Programme where Marx does not necessarily reject everything associated with bourgois society but rather wants to advance whatever insights bourgeois society has revealed to radicals. Similar commentary can be found in Letter to Arnold Ruge where he argues that the goal of radicals is to advance “the struggles and wishes of the age”.
Notice that nowhere did he say that Milton and Shelley were in a continuum with Limbaugh. Another comment you made that is a slopppy reading.
Milton and Shelley represent unapologetic radicals of their time. Milton, pre terror, flamed viciously. Shelley, witnessing the excesses of the Terror, recoiled from it. He was using them to describe different positions taken in response to their historic circumstances. Shelley witnessed excesses of vituperative rhetoric descending into physical violence.
Hawkes goes on to say that, while he sympathizes with Shelley, he’s thinking that the internet can save us from the fear that this will errupt in the excesses of physical violence.
Nowhere in there did he pluck Limbaugh or Paglia out and say, “See, these people are like Milton and Shelley.”
I have more to say, but a job is a lot more important than continuing further.
ta.
Hawkes is arguing for a “rhetorical revolution.” That is “desirable” in his opinion. This rhetorical revolution will not adhere to “bourgeois” standards of decorum, which would condemn the radical to “impotence.” Since Hawkes sets up his standards of decorum in opposition to the fervently desired revolution, it is clear that here at least he is describing a negative feature of the bourgeois.
More generally, it is of course true that “bourgeois” can be used descriptively, within Marxism and without it.
The situation you describe from 1994 is still with us; after all, who has done as much recently to muddy and coarsen public discourse than Bush? But let’s not start confusing the “historical situation” of the radical, with the unimaginative and usually ineffective symmetrical response: if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, rhetorically speaking.
Look at this quote:
Hawkes thinks that this “trouncing” is a result of unrestricted form. He’s right in the sense that the internet is not as much restricted by corporate interests or entrenched politics, as is the mass media. But he’s wrong if he thinks that the “trouncing” is the result of anything besides the ability of the left to consistently produce more accurate, better reasoned, better argued positions, a phenomenon that begins with a highly controlled craft on the part of individual writers. In terms of simply being dismissive, smug, and uttering rallying cries taken up by thousands of readers and commenters, the left has no advantage. Plenty of conservative blogs enable this process for the right wing daily.
To return to the matter of the symmetrical response to Limbaugh: Nonviolence is asymmetrical. Guerrilla warfare is asymmetrical. All of the best strategies of resistance have taken asymmetry as their starting point. So it should not come as a surprise that the best response to rightist or bigoted flaming is asymmetrical, also.
RenEv, nobody is getting packed off to therapy for getting angry. We’re talking about what makes writing effective, and in what way we want our writing to succeed. If I thought anybody involved in the debate was, I don’t know, unbalanced or hysterical or something, it would then hardly be a discussion worth having.
One more important note about Hawkes’s essay: “On the Internet, people can tell each other what they really think of them.” This is so misguided. First of all, a given person may have a mistaken position; what I “really think of them” is that they’re wrong, not that they’re human trash.
Secondly, on the Internet, I am confined to telling some persona, anonymous or not, broadly representative of the individual in question or not, what I really think. Considering those restrictions, Hawkes’s new age of honesty is a little over-triumphant.
JK:
That was snark, not aimed at you nor the thread ‘over there’…,mild humor for the aggressive QD.