Ta-Nehisi Coates Rules, The Thread

His post a few days ago complaining about liberal gays who believe they're Born This Way was so tendentious that I suspect he's a frustrated pop critic who wants to write about Lady Gaga

omg love this wasteman

had never heard of him before but from the moment I first laid eyes on his loving description of how judiciously he would read this book uncritically praised by all other people I knew that this was a useless drooping prick that wasn't done applying its clown makeup

He'll read you the right way

I doubt it, nobody else seems capable

(non sequitur post, please ignore)

My approximation of how black studies would respond to this is that the slave class--which is contiguous with the system now referred to as blackness--is denied a subjectivity; the Cartesian subject is a white subject. The structures of race are themselves ontological

largely agree with treeship’s response (though don't think caputo’s position is what treeship ascribes to him)

skimmed metamute piece, wd have to read more patiently, find myself objecting to a lot of it (but maybe my objections just/mostly philosophical/academic)

my problem maybe (in response to this piece, tnc re ‘bodies’, & yr post, deej) is absoluteness of linguistic/conceptual formulations, unbridgeable dichotomies, what seem like false either/ors (in their own way falling prey to form of conceptual 'purification')

v necessary to critique— historicize, genealogize, deconstruct— philosophical constructs like pure reason, cartesian ego, kantian transcendental subject

part of that is seeing how constructs involve (invisibly) operations of exclusion, difference from/ negation of other(s) (nonrational, nonmale, nonwhite etc)— ‘absences’ which, when made visible, typically, not coincidentally, are/ appear as bodies

critique all the more important bc such constructs likely involved (invisibly) in present structures of injustice

but it’s one thing to say “the Cartesian subject is a white subject,” or that blackness was “denied a subjectivity”
& another to reject e.g. notion of ‘subjectivity’ entirely

don’t like when language is reified, overregulated, for (even well-intentioned) political reasons
think there’s more power in having plurality, diversity of language-games (language-games which can be (re)appropriated, reinterpreted, reinvented) through which to articulate experience

nb none of this is criticism of tnc; his choice of language is deliberate directed effective
just questioning pervasive adoption of ‘black bodies’ formulation

quite like the sound of that book on r but I've not time right now to give it the full attn

my problem maybe (in response to this piece, tnc re ‘bodies’, & yr post, deej) is absoluteness of linguistic/conceptual formulations, unbridgeable dichotomies, what seem like false either/ors (in their own way falling prey to form of conceptual 'purification')

Isn't this where someone points out that blackness is an absolute? In its social function? Like, Rachel dolezal is white and that's an absolute

Anyway, I don't think the idea is to reject that subjectivity exists in the individual but in the individuals systemic identity, a slave to a skin tone

Idk I'm not the ideal person to argue this, I've only read a few chapters of wilderson and never went to grad school but

Metamute piece isn't what you're disagreeing with, it's a dispassionate qualitative description of a movement w/in black studies that has garnered a lot of traction win the last decade

Re afro-pessimism, I don't get why rationality/subjectivity is posited as *necessarily* defined against blackness, to a degree that can't be overcome except through a total revolution or what Wilderson calls the "end of the world." Passages like this seem to draw the worst conclusions from the observations of clearly accurate observations about the colonialist and racist subtext of Western notions of "pure" rationalism:

In relation to riots in particular, calls for ‘social justice’, ‘rights’, ‘police accountability and transparency’ obscure the essence of these movements, whose meaning resides entirely on the surface. They are fundamentally demandless and intentionally destructive. There is no ‘point’ except for utter dissolution of the current state of affairs. As viewed by the Afro-pessimists, the demandlessness of these struggles cannot be reduced to any single empirical aspect – freedom here and now must be absolute not relative. An irreconcilable antagonism produces black existence positioning it against humanity. This antagonism can only be resolved by the cathartic purge of violence. It is the use of violence that must first be expropriated, both materially and symbolically.

I think it misunderstands the recent riots to see them as a cathartic purge of violence against ontological imprisonment. They are a display of righteous anger against literal imprisonment - the imprisonment of bodies. African Americans are political agents, if oppressed and marginalized ones. These struggles are about claiming agency; they're not fundamentally antisocial.*

*maybe i misunderstand what's being said, always a risk with critical theory whether you've been to grad school or not

Me too.

I'd note first off that this is a classic move by privileged intellectuals: The People (We Love Them But They) don't understand what they want; they need us to explain it. "They are fundamentally demandless" it says - UM, REALLY? Like, wanting to actually hold cops to what is supposed to be the law is no demand of rioters responding to police violence? They're just throwing up their hands in the air like they don't care?

Interesting how this "liberating" view doesn't differ in many ways from appalling racist views of rioters as thugs. "An irreconcilable antagonism produces black existence positioning it against humanity." Charles Krauthammer might phrase it a little differently, but hey.

It's not like there aren't any conventionally rational & reasonable arguments against racism or police violence. Actually, I don't know of any conventionally rational & reasonable arguments FOR them.

Ergo, rationality and reasonableness wouldn't seem to be the prime oppressor here. What exactly is proposed as a replacement anyway, besides more grad school?

freddie died for our sins http://fredrikdeboer.com/2015/07/15/i-still-like-em/

rationality/subjectivity is posited as *necessarily* defined against blackness

i think a significant part of this is that 'race' as a category at all doesn't really exist in its current form until the 18th century, and then it's right there in the foundations of the rational enlightenment individual as a category of separation and exploitation. under these terms race is nothing but exploitation. but i dunno

in spite of it all... i still kinda like freddie tho

Rational/logical thinking invented well before 18th C. More to the point, the critique of rational/logical thinking is generally presented as a form of....rational/logical thinking.

I get that Merdeyeux but why is blackness destined to *always remain* the other of rationality? And if this thinking is still latent in how we think (which it is, and often not too latent either) why is the solution not just deconstruction and critique? Why would this specter if the denial of black humanity mean there can be no black politics today? (This I think is implied in the afro-pessimist account, which seems to deny the substantive content of the recent movement against police brutality.) The whole thing seems, like drash said, way too eager to make final declarations about the meanings of things, and also does so in a way that forecloses on real political possibilities. I criticized caputo too along a similar line -- assigning out view of the subject wholly to a colonialist perspective/context -- but to his credit he doesn't draw these conclusions.

Sry for the typos

Also merdyeux i understand u were just unpacking the point, sorry to have addressed my critique to you and not the article

I want to read Incognegro though, because I suspect I don't have a grasp of the total argument; I'm only responding to the summaries and quotes being posted.

vic (and maybe treesh) it's not a critique of rationality or logical thinking as a whole, rather the kind of rational subjectivity that can give make notions like 'human rights' tenable in the first place. so roughly speaking post-locke (who incidentally made a tonne of money in the slave trade).

treesh for most of your stuff i still dunno but i think maybe afro-pessimism's political logic is essentially revolutionary (cf fanon), reformism just doesn't cut it when the system is oppressive all the way down

mb http://www.yorku.ca/intent/issue5/articles/pdfs/jaredsextonarticle.pdf will be of interest

A notion like human rights is an attempt at defeating the simple dictates of might-makes-right with an idea that people ought to be better to each other. Better ideas pursuing the same goal are welcome; potshots against the fallible character of John Locke are not.

Hey, we could endorse some kind of tear-down-the-system-violently thing - a total crapshoot by the way, with no guarantees of a good outcome but plenty of blood and chances for deep misery and even worse oppression - but if it "succeeds," then when it's over, and a bunch of people are dead...... well, what happens then? Why do they then have some kind of society free from oppression? What would be different? How does it stay non-oppressive?

I get that Merdeyeux but why is blackness destined to *always remain* the other of rationality?

Occam's razor?

my potshot at locke was cheap but one can quite well map a racial logic intrinsic to his thought which carries through. i have no firm position on what that means re current issues of subjectivity and race besides 'it's messy and difficult'.

Why has it lasted hundreds of years already?

Nb western civilization's origins and dependence on a slave class go back much further than the 18th cen

(This I think is implied in the afro-pessimist account, which seems to deny the substantive content of the recent movement against police brutality.)

Wait, did the brutality stop? Did I miss something ?

he means, what it meant, what it was about

Isn't what it meant all about substantive results

I think of afropessimism as the Adorno to performance studies' benjamin

Adorno was an elitist dumbass.

Come on D-40, the presence of slavery is not relevant to the development of logical thought. It's not like if they didn't have slavery somehow logical thought would work differently. They had or sold slaves because they could, because people are often mean assholes if they can get away with it.

by the way, do you have some kind of issue with the way that Martin Luther King used logic in his writings and speeches? Should he have abandoned the cursed racist ways of logic? Let's hear the critique.

The passage denies that the riots are about brutality at all. It says that they are "demandless," purely destructive, anarchic violence directed at society as a whole. Maybe this is true of some rioters, but overall the unrest is due to people protesting police abuse.

Right on Treeship, my point earlier.

By the way the Situationists did the same routine with the Watts riots, claiming the rioters as fellow French nihilists. First time as tragedy, 2nd time as farce...

It's not like if they didn't have slavery somehow logical thought would work differently

this is exactly the case in various well-documented ways (quick example: bond between the category of race and taxonomy as a dominant general model of understanding how things work), but luckily there's more than one kind of logic

I'll say.

Adorno was an elitist dumbass.

ehhh he's always worth visiting, like a buffet

also more of a rationalist than vic perry

I have a qn that might sound ignorant, but why is the concept of human rights necessarily rooted in racial and gender exclusions? It started out that way: purporting to speak for humans in general but really only covering a narrow group of people - white property owning men - but over time the definition has expanded. At least conceptually it aspires to account for all people, at least most of the times it is invoked. How it actually plays out is another story, but if a society doesn't live up to its ideals does this invalidate the ideals?

I've heard people argue that the issue is that other societies have different views on rights and so the universality of the concept of inherent human rights erases their perspective. But this seems different than the original problem of the concept not including all humans in its definition of "human." Also, within a single society or legal system I think the notion that every citizen has the same rights is invaluable. How can you even critique inequality without a concept that people should be equal, or *are* equal in some transcendental sense?

I'm not arguing that this and other "enlightenment" concepts shouldn't be interrogated, but like, i think we can be more nuanced about it. These ideas aren't always smokescreens for oppression, or at least they aren't always *only* that.

Change my mind on Adorno --- pick something short though!

Minima Moralia is an unofficial comp!

You can open that book wherever you want.

Change my mind on Adorno --- pick something short though!

― Vic Perry, Wednesday, July 15, 2015 10:32 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

...twitter...

I used to keep that book on my bedside table next to Montaigne, the Good News New Testament, and the Chris Heath Pet Shop Boys book Literally.

Thanks Alfred, that's pretty good company.

Bad posts itt but I'm on a phone on a plane. More later

xp 'critical models' is generally more readable, with lots of talks and essays prepared for general audience, radio appearances, etc.; you can pick and choose a relevant topic. i like the ones on teaching.

When D-40 gets off that plane it's all over for me. Goodbye friends, I am soon to be crushed beyond the possibility of reply.

I think just the bare concept of ‘equal human rights’ would often be insufficient as a tool against racist brutality. Most of these cops probably agree that black people have/deserve equal rights but will nonetheless say it’s necessary to be more aggressive/circumspect when dealing with them. This is based on observation of their behaviour, and doesn’t infringe their ‘rights’ per se. So it’s necessary to convince these people that they should treat everyone as harmless until they prove otherwise. They have to be convinced to go against their own prejudice which they believe to be rational and necessary for self-preservation.

Ultimately you can argue for this this in terms of a human right not to be pre-judged on the basis of race etc, particularly not by a representative of the state, particularly not by a white person, but it’s not as simple as a simple civil right.

oh shit that’s garbled - I mean, it’s necessary to convince cops to go against their self-preservation ‘instinct’. There’s not only the other person’s right, but also a conflict between their right and the cop’s own right to his perceived self-preservation.

Oh yeah, you need to fo beyond a civil rights model to fight racism. I was just saying that human rights is not necessarily a "compromised" paradigm. The only people seeming to claim this mentioned on this thread btw are the afro-pessimists, who argue that black people will never be recognized as human, that race is an intractable "antagonism" rather than a "conflict." I think I disagree with this.

Also, none of this has to do with Ta Nehisi-Coates. Sorry for the role I played in driving this thread off track.

Or maybe that paradigm is compromised. It definitely is worth interrogating, like everything else. I just don't think it's bankrupt.

I wanted to read the new book in barnes and noble today but they didnt have it