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Showing posts from May, 2014

Feminists do not want to be associated with the invocation of feminism by racists

"The Republican abuse of the term 'feminism' in the past decade or so is an astonishing lesson in the politically opportunistic use of language. Where the Right would have once bundled queers, leftists, feminists, peaceniks and other sundry misfits together as internal enemies of the state, when it came to providing reasons for the invasion of Afghanistan, in particular, the language of feminism was suddenly plucked from the dustbin of history as a specifically 'Western' value. [...] The invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were both justified by an appeal to the emancipation of women, and the discourse of feminism was specifically invoked. [...] The battle for public support for the wars was played out through a combination of the liberal 'feminist' discourse of rights and the hawkish premise that only carpet-bombing the oppressive enemy could solve the problem. Just as the Bush administration neglected to ask their experienced diplomats about other ways in

LGBTQI - des identités à acquérir en consommant?

"La marchandisation fait des subjectivités sexuelles et de genre des identités que l'on peut acquérir en consommant. Rosemary Hennessy (1995) et Alan Sears (2005) s'intéressent à la façon dont le néolibéralisme, qui colonise en général l'ensemble des champs sociaux de manière à les rendre marchands, a investi en particulier les identités sexuelles et de genre pour en faire des ''styles de vie'' ( lifestyle ) qui se caractérisent par un ensemble de biens et de pratiques à acheter, à consommer de façon individuelle. Un ensemble de bars, magasins, produits, vêtements, voyages, etc. constituent un " pink market " qui participe de la construction d'une subjectivité LGBTQI reconnaissable. [...] La marchandisation des identités LGBT (mais la remarque vaut de façon bien plus générale pour la marchandisation de l'ensemble des identités - et du désir - dans le néolibéralisme) engendre de fortes inégalités : les personnes qui n'ont pas les m

Does neoliberalism makes us obsess about diversity in order to make us forget about class inequality?

"Ungrateful conservatives often complain about the political correctness of liberals, but the liberalism that strives to achieve equality by celebrating diversity is a liberalism that every conservative should love and that opponents of the liberal elite have put to good use. What the commitment to diversity seeks is not a society in which there are no poor people but one in which there's nothing wrong with being poor, a society in which poor people - like blacks and Jews and Asians - are respected. And in the effort to create such a world, liberalism has ended up playing a useful if no doubt unintended role, the role of supplying the right with just the kind of left it wants. What the right wants is culture wars instead of class wars because as long as the wars are about identity instead of money, it doesn't matter who wins. And the left gives it what it wants". Walter Benn Michaels (2006), The Trouble with Diversity. How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore I