Are we who you say we are?

Lots of different kinds of remarks don't travel; they don't circulate seamlessly from one context to another. Instead, their travels are stained with a kind of remnant or remainder. It may well be that this stain or remainder is central to their use; awareness of the stain, an irrational nugget, marks one as an appropriate user of the term. Often, becoming aware is difficult, painful; perhaps that it why it marks membership and appropriate use.

Several years ago my father gave Paul a 'personal groomer' for Christmas (read nosehair clipper, sideburn trimmer, multi-purpose hair removal apparatus for men). Because this was so traumatic, I frequently mentioned it, making fun of the gift. Yet, I was furious when I heard Paul and his sister joking about the groomer. They were making fun of my father, my family, and, by extension, me.

In the culture wars, the Right loves to trash feminists and feminism. They hate feminists in the academy, women's studies, the teaching of feminist theory. So, they bash feminism. Feminists respond in 2 ways: one, by circling the wagons and bashing the Right; two, by pointing out that there are multiple, differentiated feminisms. In fact, more important to most feminists than the stupidities of the Right are our own internal debates and disagreements. These are the discussions that matter (to us). I team teach with a gender constructivist who thinks that all differences between men and women are socially constructed. As a Lacanian, I view this slightly differently: sexual difference is real and the multiple expressions of gender are responses to this fundamental gap or antagonism.

In fact, I don't think that one can find a noncontroversial definition of feminism that would enable the term to function as a coherent object to criticize or attack. A bumper sticker version is something like 'feminism is the view that women are people, too'. Anti-humanist or radical environmental feminists would challenge this definition because of the primacy of the human; they would argue that this very primacy is what feminism has to challenge. Another example is a claim like 'feminists think that human rights are women's rights'. Many of us reject the discourse of rights and see feminism as providing a vital standpoint from which to critique rights talk.

The same holds when one talks about political theory. In American political science, theorists are a separate subfield and generally treated as separate by the rest of the discipline. We are sometimes considered a field among ourselves, perhaps because we read Aristotle and Hobbes while the others think that politics can be a science and try to find formal models that do something besides stating the obvious. Yet, political theorists disagree among ourselves. A big division is between those who do a kind of analytic political theory--or who are still oriented toward Rawls--and those who do continental. Yet, among continental theorists there are also huge debates and disagreements. The Habermasians don't read Deleuze or Zizek (not to mention Ranciere, Laclau, Agamben, or Badiou). And, while I'm on a journal with a bunch of Deleuzians, they are generally non-sympathetic to Zizek (they think he is not immanent enough and that the notion of the lack is both dangerous and wrong).

Can it mean anything, then, to reject or criticize political theory as a whole? If one is a formal modeler, yes. One is saying that only with formal methods can anything significant be said about politics. But, this is not a critique. It is simply a rejection. I don't critique formal modeling in my work. I simply reject it. I find it uninteresting and irrelevant. (I'll add that I do think there is an important role for a lot of empirical political science although I don't do that sort of work myself.)

Ray Davies makes an interesting point in a thread over at faucets and pipes:

Words aren’t solid tokens which can be extracted from one game and used in a different game while meaning the same thing. Precise definitions are important when rationally arguing against a supposedly rational argument, but can be toxic to community formation, as I’ve personally seen in attempts to establish the boundaries of “science fiction” or “poetry”. A social term is, finally, defined socially, and, in healthily varied communities, allows for unpredictable outliers.

I agree. Terms are markers of discursive communities.

So, can one criticize an entire discursive community by invoking one of their terms? Yes, if one is rejecting the community per se. Here one would be making an institutional argument, that is, an argument about the group existing as a group. But one would not be addressing any of the discursive content through which the group is constituted. Why--because it is precisely the contestation over the content that designates membership in the group. (This is why I never take a stand on alien abduction or 9/11 truth; that would constitute me as a member of the group/discursive community I'm trying to understand.)

The sleight of hand comes in with the shift involved in using terms with currency within the group in a different setting, for a different purpose, while denying that difference in setting and purpose. So, feminists tell the Right in the culture wars that they don't know what they are talking about since feminists disagree. Political theorists tell political scientists that most of them don't know what they are talking about since political theorists disagree. Deleuzians tell Zizekians that Zizek gets Deleuze wrong and Zizekians tell Deleuzians that they don't know what they are talking about since they don't read more than one or two things by Zizek. Finally, Zizek readers argue with each other about how to read and interpret. These are real disagreements and debates. The critic who comes in, using a term with currency within a community to dismiss that community erases the disagreements and debates constitutive of that community. Differently put, the critic fails to acknowledge the way communities form along antagonisms.

Are broad disagreements and debates possible? That is, can there be a discussion on a large scale that isn't nonsensical? Perhaps. In the same thread, John Emerson introduces a valuable typology in determining groups or discursive communities:

1. A group of people who talk mostly to each other. 2. Generally agreed-upon and
practiced criteria for how discourse should be conducted. 3. A set of canonical books or other writings honored by the community.

It seems to me that #2 is central to answering the question. Without agreed-upon and practiced criteria, a discussion isn't possible. #1 changes: national meetings, journals, small meetings, the folks one asks to read drafts, that sort of thing. #3 is usually introduced to trump in a debate (so, a common criticism involves challenging a person's archive; for example, to discuss Zizek coherently, one should read more than On Belief; or, I am sometimes urged to read Baudrillard; finally, a major way that debates in academic feminism unfolded in the eighties was in terms of archive--white feminists were criticized for ignoring the work of feminists of color).

Of course, #2 may also be the most difficult. People accuse one another of not conducting themselves according to agreed upon criteria--of bad faith, disingenuousness, and deceit. And, when faced with this accusation, some respond by pointing out that the very accusation was raised in bad faith. And then the very possibility of debate become impossible, yet again.

Comments

[Ken]

Best post ever. And, academically speaking, the most important.

[Jodi]

wow, thanks, Ken. I really appreciate it.

[Adam Kotsko]

Yes, this is really good.

[Andrew]

As I read this I was thinking, 'wow, this so great, so lucid; just the seamless coupling of critical analysis and situated, personal reflection that makes this blog exceptional.' Yup.

[Jodi]

You guys are really making my evening (well, you guys and my adorable kids sitting on the coach with their beers (root) and chips watching the superbowl.