Re: Taibbi (was Re: Fwd: Antioch College Closing!)
On Jun 16, 2007, at 2:19 AM, Joseph Catron wrote:
identity politics war far superior, for their purposes, to class struggle.
Damn, I thought this opposition of “class vs. identity” had gone the
way of the dodo, or at least the 90s. Why are these things in
opposition? Race, sex, sexual preference are all tied up with the
distribution of property and the division of labor. They intersect
with class in all kinds of ways: jobs, promotions, pay, access to
inheritance. And it’s a phenomenal fact that people experience their
lives through these “identity” categories. You can tell them all you
like that it’s a delusion, and it’s really all about class, but
you’ve got to do a lot of analytical and rhetorical work to make that
clear. There’s no pure essence of class apart from these categories
in actual lives. And there are a lot of important things that class
doesn’t really touch - like the privilege of visiting your sick
partner in the ICU.
Doug