Egalitarian Epistemology
During recent discussions about postmodernism and its implications, a few readers have argued, implausibly, that as a loose set of ideas postmodernism has no single political bias. It’s true that postmodernism is remarkably ill-defined, not least by its devotees, and one might use the term ‘postmodern’ as a kind of shorthand to refer to any cultural product that’s conspicuously aware of its own history and conventions. One might, for instance, regard The Simpsons as postmodern without assigning any particular political leaning to its characters or creators.
But insofar as postmodernism refers to a range of claims regarding the relativism of knowledge and ethics – specifically the claim, expressed with varying degrees of emphasis and clarity, that all aspects of reality are socially constructed or meaningful only as social intercourse – then these claims are political in their implications. As are assertions that Western knowledge – regarding, say, cosmology, computing or medical treatments – is a de facto power grab, the aim of which is, allegedly, to bolster the ideological “hegemony” of Western capitalist societies. Indeed, the assertion of epistemic questions as political activism is a defining trait of much postmodern rhetoric. The leftwing theorist Frank Lentricchia happily told the world that the postmodern movement “seeks not to find the foundation and conditions of truth, but to exercise power for the purpose of social change.” Achieved, one might suppose, even at the cost of truth. This overt political emphasis has led to an error and a misplaced pluralism. Specifically, the conflation of knowledge and fairness, and typically expressed as a belief that no one epistemological position – at least not a “Western” one – can be “privileged” above another, ostensibly in the interests of resisting “cultural imperialism.”
The assertion that reality is a matter of local consensus or social custom, with no existence independent of the claims made about it, seems to presuppose that there is nothing “outside” of social intercourse, and by extension that nothing much matters besides society. The default emphasis of such claims is on society, not the individual – who is, implicitly, reduced to an artefact of society, and whose character can presumably be reconstructed by society as is seen fit. Hence the preoccupation with social consensus as defining what reality is, whether or not the particulars of reality are known to human beings. A philosophy of this kind would appear to be a narcissistic cul-de-sac and metaphysically agoraphobic.
Several PoMo figures, among them Andrew Ross and Sandra Harding, have argued that rationality, coherence and standards of evidence are merely social artefacts coloured by white male patriarchy and other Western vices. Thus, it is argued, one cannot assert the primacy of the scientific method over, say, a belief in voodoo or Scientology. Defined in this way, epistemology becomes a matter of lifestyle choice or political preference. Hence Harding’s unveiling of “feminist empiricism”, a quasi-Marxist alternative to the kind that actually works.
This kind of epistemic egalitarianism may seem quite thrilling to a subset of leftist ideologues, particularly those who resent the functional pre-eminence of Western societies, and who feel it is somehow wrong that so-called “Western ways of knowing” are also pre-eminent in their effectiveness. It’s perhaps unnecessary to point out that this levelling of all knowledge claims is also of enormous benefit to Ross and Harding personally, both of whom make grandiose claims based on precious little evidence. But the practical and ethical implications of levelling knowledge in this way, supposedly in the name of “fairness”, are both repellent and unsound. Given there are those who rail against the “microfascism” of “evidence-based discourse” and its “hidden political agenda”, this particular strand of egalitarian fantasy can lead to a nihilistic conclusion.
Ophelia Benson and Jeremy Stangroom address this point, among others, in an essay for Axess magazine. In it, they challenge those who would disassemble and deny “not just the criteria for science and reason, but science and reason themselves.” By way of illustration, Benson and Stangroom quote Frederique Apffel Marglin, who rails against smallpox vaccination while romanticising the Indian worship of Sitala, the goddess of smallpox, as an equally valid “narrative”. Marglin – who, one hopes, has been vaccinated against life-threatening diseases – affects to “challenge science’s claim to be a superior form of knowledge which renders obsolete more traditional systems of thought.” In an essay published in Dominating Knowledge: Development, Culture and Resistance, she writes,
“In absolutely negativising disease, suffering and death, in opposing these to health and life in a mutually exclusive manner, the scientific medical system of knowledge can separate in individuals and in populations what is absolutely bad, the enemy to be eradicated, from what is good, health and life. In the process it can and does objectify people with all the repressive political possibilities that objectification opens.”
As Benson and Stangroom point out,
“There is something rather stunning about a level of science-phobia that sees ‘negativising’ disease, suffering and death, as harmful and repressive. It is extraordinary that Marglin, even for a moment, countenances the possibility that human suffering might be a source of joy and pleasure if only it weren’t for the intervention of an oppressive system of Western medicine.”
This is the postmodern wasteland to which egalitarian epistemology can lead, and to which, left unchecked, it very often does.
Please, read it all. Related: Ophelia Benson on lit crit insecurity, “physics envy” and why truth matters. (mp3)
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“But fashions such as the miniskirt were invented by men, not women. It is interesting to speculate what women would wear if there were no men setting the standards.”
I’m intrigued by this point.
The facts of the case are that Mary Quant, who I’m sure was female, invented the mini. So you’re wrong on the narrow point, but you make a broader assertion.
Fashion is designed and promoted disproportionately by women and gay men. Moreover this is a community that likes to think it is always at the cutting edge in terms of politics as well as ideas. At the magazines, editorials are determined virtually unanimously by women and as buyers and sellers at the retail outlets, again dominated by women. The vast majority of male partners of women consumers loath shopping in general and fashion shopping in particular. Women talk about fashion to each other and exclude men from those conversations. If this is a hegemony imposed by heterosexual men, we have decidedly few men engaged in the activity either overtly or subconsciously.
The second point relates to the freedom woman have to select their own standards. The fact is that the vast majority of fashions fail to translate from the drawing board to woman’s wardrobes. Even accepting that some filtering goes on between design and retail outlet, we have to acknowledge that fashion trends are in the final analysis determined by what people buy. Mary Quant owned and ran her own shop and sold her own designs. They were bought by women. A success was copied by less imaginative outlets who again achieved remarkable sales to women. At the same time different fashions were promoted by both designers, woman’s magazines and newspapers that did not sell as well. At what point do we have to acknowledge that this was a free choice by women?
It seems to me that this is just a version of the “false consciousness” theory espoused by Marx. The purpose being to explain away the uncomfortable fact that Marxists ideas are rejected by the people they are intended to benefit. Thus our elite simultaneously claim autonomy over their own thought processes but deny them to anyone who disagrees with them. And then claim they are not totalitarian.
On reflection, I’m going to change “Mary Quant invented” to “Mary Quant is widely credited with inventing”.
David:
It is a pity that I shall be hors de combat until tomorrow, because there is much to respond to in what I take to be a thread that shows no signs of dying. But, very quickly, I can’t let you get away with calling Stanley Fish and Terry Eagleton “frauds,” if that is what you are doing in your last comment. (It is, admittedly, a little ambiguous in that respect.)
I haven’t read Eagleton on the Sokal affair, but he actually presents himself as a strong critic of PoMo from the Left. Perhaps you could direct me to the reference in which he defends Social Text–I simply can’t find it at present. But Fish, in any case, makes a good point, after defending the PoMo line of enquiry more generally. (Perhaps he, like me, felt that the whole kit and caboodle was at stake, not merely its excesses. And I think, in the case of Sokal, that he was spot on.)
Essentially, he thinks it was a dirty trick. You know my view–that the hoax was salutary–but there is room to suggest that Sokal did trade upon the trust that normally exists among academics to insert his imposture. It might be likened, perhaps, to a critical article on a non-existent author submitted to a literary journal (I seem to recall that such hoaxes have indeed been perpetrated). Fish’s concern, in any case, is that this trick brought the entire field under fire, which, quite frankly, I believe to have been Sokal’s intention all along.
In any case, a more sober reading of both “sides” in this affair is this one:
Barsky, R.F. “Intellectuals on the Couch: The Sokal Hoax and Other Impostures intellectuelles.” SubStance, V.28, No.1, Issue 88: Special Issue: Literary History. (1999) 105-119.
The struggle continues.
Dr Dawg,
“I can’t let you get away with calling Stanley Fish and Terry Eagleton ‘frauds,’ if that is what you are doing in your last comment.”
I called Ross and Harding frauds, which they are. And Fish defended Social Text, not Eagleton.
“Perhaps he, like me, felt that the whole kit and caboodle was at stake, not merely its excesses.”
The problem I and quite a few others have is that there’s an awful lot of “excess”. So much, in fact, one might consider it the norm, or a very large part thereof. I refer you to my earlier points about an academic environment in which fraudulence, demagoguery and incompetence are tolerated to such an extent, and even championed.
Karen M,
“It seems to me that this is just a version of the ‘false consciousness’ theory espoused by Marx. The purpose being to explain away the uncomfortable fact that Marxists ideas are rejected by the people they are intended to benefit. Thus our elite simultaneously claim autonomy over their own thought processes but deny them to anyone who disagrees with them.”
Heh. Amen, sister. 🙂 Welcome aboard. It seems to me that the fondness for seeing “hegemony”, real or imagined, is very much part of the problem, as is the quasi-Marxist schtick more generally. It’s a pretty heavy filter through which to see the world. It rather presupposes – and, of course, requires – suitably oppressed victim groups on whose behalf it can presume to act. If no readily available victim group is at hand, or if the victims available are of the wrong sort, then some other category of humankind can be construed as suffering oppression, regardless of slim evidence, or no evidence at all.
As I said before, the women I know well don’t seem to be “oppressed” or “acted upon” in any obviously patriarchal or grievous ways, and I suspect they’d take exception to any such suggestion. But perhaps Dr Dawg would like to tell *them* they’re being “oppressed” by heinous patriarchal forces and that, by implication, their choices and concerns are not their own. If so, I don’t fancy his chances.
David:
“But it’s a big leap from Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell to frauds like Andrew Ross and Sandra Harding. Or indeed to Terry Eagleton or Stanley Fish, who rushed to defend Social Text after the Sokal hoax”
A lot of ambiguity here. What’s your critique of Eagleton in this context?
Karen M.:
Interesting points. I’ll be back to you on this.
À demain.
Dr Dawg,
“A lot of ambiguity here. What’s your critique of Eagleton in this context?”
I don’t see much ambiguity. Perhaps you’re squinting. My comments regarding Eagleton’s more lurid and dubious claims are below:
https://thompsonblog.co.uk/2007/02/pomo_terry_eagl_1.html
https://thompsonblog.co.uk/2007/02/terry_eagleton_.html
David:
The ambiguities are two: are you calling Eagleton a “fraud,” or just saying that he’s no Einstein? And did he rush to defend Sokal, or was it only Fish?
I read not only your two posts, but followed a few of the links. I can see obvious disagreements between Eagleton and yourself. But that hardly makes him a “fraud.”
Karen M.:
Let me collect myself after a long trip. At this point, I just want to note that I’m a bit surprised that we are having this discussion in 2007. Why do women wear high heels, but not (most) men? Why is sexuality on display in one culture, but carefully concealed in another? (And please note, I am referring to hijab in our society, where no religious police exist.) Why is it women who perform genital mutilation in Africa?
If “false consciousness” is a category without value, how would you prefer to analyze skin-lighteners and hair-straighteners for Black people?
Anyway, bisy backson.
Dr Dawg,
“I can see obvious disagreements between Eagleton and yourself. But that hardly makes him a ‘fraud’…”
No, it makes him wrong. Read my post of the 27th, 14:33. I called Ross and Harding frauds, and with obvious cause. I have no idea whether or not Eagleton is fraudulent, and I didn’t claim he was. But his quoted statements are certainly objectionable, factually unreliable and morally perverse. Perhaps that Marxist erection is cutting off the blood flow to his brain.
I repeat part of an earlier post to return to a larger issue:
“The problem I and quite a few others have is that there’s an awful lot of ‘excess’. So much, in fact, one might consider it the norm, or a very large part thereof… There are simply too many incompetents, ideologues and charlatans to imagine them to be anomalies. That so many of them survive, even flourish, suggests a dysfunction of the academic environment they inhabit. I struggle to imagine another discipline – say, chemistry, medicine or mathematics – in which comparable bare-faced flummery, incompetence and deception would be tolerated, even championed.”
To elaborate: One cannot simply dismiss the endless rhetorical “flourishes” of Ross, Harding, Marglin, Fegan, Lyotard, Lentricchia, et al, which claim a great deal and insinuate even more, but actually prove very little or nothing whatsoever. What we get, and get very often, are assertions couched in jargon based on a doubtful or unproven premise. Ross’ book, ‘Strange Weather’, is an obvious example, as is his anthology, ‘Science Wars’, the contents of which were drawn from Social Text (and from which Sokal’s hoax was subsequently deleted without explanation).
One might note just how much effort such figures have put into redefining or “liberating” the parameters of academic enquiry, its methodology and standards of evidence. One might also note the subsequent prevalence of unsubstantiated, politicised and fanciful, even preposterous, assertions based on precious little evidence and often shrouded in jargon to look suitably grand. And one might wonder if these two things are related.
[ wheels jukebox into middle of room again ]
http://fp.ignatz.plus.com/mama1.mp3
Eagleton has written much that is just plain wrong (as opposed to the “not even wrong” of PoMo). But as a writer he’s relatively direct and straightforward, and sometimes quite witty and amusing. He doesn’t go in for the extreme obscurity of PoMo.
I’m here, alongside Sokal, trying to argue that PoMo isn’t really “left wing” at all. I’d like to suggest to David that there’s another current in PoMo that may be more relevant. The key element is actually RELIGION.
Consider this. Derrida’s later writings became more and more concerned with religion and religious themes. Foucault’s later journalism enthused over the then new theocracy in Iran. The “vulgar” PoMo of the grauniad – eg Bunting – has a religious flavour. Eagleton, both a Catholic and a Marxist, is fittingly both pro and anti PoMo. He’s written probably the most fierce attack on Richard Dawkins’ “The God Delusion”.
Most of the anti-PoMo camp are atheists, secularists or at least rationalists. Dawkins, Searle, Sokal etc.
There’s an argument that’s so obvious, I don’t know if I should even bother to state it. Religion is the natural home of obscuritanism. Ask a Catholic to explain the trinity, for instance. So there’s a kind of gravitational pull, drawing PoMo writers towards the ultimate repository of the obscure…
Georges,
Hm. As I don’t know the religious subscriptions, if any, of all the figures concerned it’s hard to comment usefully. Though Derrida did acquire shaman-like status among his credulous followers, and Foucault’s enthusiasm for a “perfectly unified collective will” struck me as both fascistic and overtly religious in tone. And I suppose one could draw parallels between forms of egalitarian / utopian belief and religion more generally. I’ve had conversations with deluded Alabama ministers, deranged Islamists and neo-Marxist ideologues, and the differences between them have, at times, not been entirely obvious.
And here I thought the “problem” with PoMo was a distrust of metanarratives. Incidentally, I don’t think much of Dawkins’ metaphysics either (just another metanarrative). There’s a very good review of The God Delusion here: Marilynne Robinson, “Hysterical scientism:The ecstasy of Richard Dawkins”
Harper’s Magazine, November 2006.
I don’t think it’s an alliance between religion and postmodernism ‘per se’, but rather that both rely for their basic axioms on faith and authority.
Then, both assume an essentialism of reality, ie, an a priori ‘will’ to exist (Derrida’s mystic Writing). Or an a posteriori ‘will’ (Foucault) of the collective – which is postmodernism’s alliance with socialism.
But since postmodernism rejects normative laws, which are universals that function as processes of metanarrative mediation to connect particular instances, then it is left only with a ‘babble of random instances’. How does one connect this random babble?
By an a priori or a posteriori essentialist Will. That essentialist authoritarianism has religious overtones. It’s this essentialism that enables postmodernists to say anything, absolutely anything, to ‘connect the random dots’ that are left after they have glibly destroyed the previous universals or metanarrative. So, postmodernists come up with their own causal factors – spurious opinions based on…on spurious opinions.
That is, since postmodernism rejects objective reality then it rejects basic causality and is left with essentialism or randomness as causes. Both move readily into a faith-based conclusion.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say that most of the postmodernist are atheists. They are rationalists, they accept objective reality and reason as the basis of analysis, they accept objective causality and reject subjective opinions. After all, the pope is against postmodernism but he’s hardly an atheist.
I think the point is the postmodern rejection of reason, objective causality and its insertion of the author’s own authoritarian persuasiveness as explanations.
I don’t really want to pursue the specific religious comparisons, but I would say that Marxism and many of its derivatives have a utopian fantasy aspect that isn’t so readily found in more prosaic politics. If memory serves, Richard Rorty once said, “The good left is a party that always thinks about the future and doesn’t much care about our past sins.” Well, if one disregards the past and its lessons, however grim, one can continue to dream the same discredited dream. One can imagine that dream to be workable and virtuous, regardless of its actual consequences, even when demonstrated repeatedly and on a catastrophic scale.
“Let me collect myself after a long trip. At this point, I just want to note that I’m a bit surprised that we are having this discussion in 2007. Why do women wear high heels, but not (most) men? Why is sexuality on display in one culture, but carefully concealed in another? (And please note, I am referring to hijab in our society, where no religious police exist.) Why is it women who perform genital mutilation in Africa?”
Interesting on Friday, dismissive on Monday. C’est la vie.
It’s really rather patronising for you to take this elitist attitude. I am incredulous at your claim of “surprise”. Whether you agree with the likes of Camilia Paglia or not, you cannot claim to be unaware of a debate. Even the Guardian and the New York Times earnestly discuss whether Madonna’s overt sexuality is feminist or not. “Surprise” would suggest you are one of those famous closeted academics.
Even if we assume that in the past the theory was settled, then new contrary evidence must still be dealt with. If we assume that pre-1970, most women were conforming out of ignorance, that excuse no longer exists. Woman reaching maturity today are taught at home, school and college about patriarchy. No one in the west can claim to be completely unaware of the feminist argument. Indeed in the late 1970s/early 1980s there was a noticeable (in Britain at least) decline in the wearing of high heels by ordinary women. Was this a rebellion against patriarchy (or conformism to the ruling college hegemony)? Yet the late 1980s saw a change and many women started to wear them again; educated women included. Why? There’s no compulsion. I work in an office where some do and some don’t. There’s no clear pattern of high heeled women being educated more, earning more, being promoted more or gaining in other ways. Your theory needs to explain why women, who stopped during their college years, started wearing them again despite the influence of feminism. You might also speculate on why I don’t wear them!
I assume you approach the problem as someone who believes that all behaviour is a social construct. You therefore deduce that for any woman to emphasis their sexuality in the absence of men doing the exact same is prima-facie evidence of sexism. I understand that Foucault supported (originated?) such a theory. I do not claim to be well read in post modernism and my knowledge of this theory derives from elsewhere. It used to be thought that sexual roles were indisputably a social construct. A proof came from the work of Professor Money, who declared that sexual roles were unfixed within the first years of life. (ie they were social constructs). This meant that baby boy could be given sexual reassignment surgery and grow up as a well adjusted girl. In 1975 he published a paper declaring proof using the case of David Reimer as evidence: “Ablatio penis”. Unfortunately for Money, someone followed up and discovered that the evidence was falsified. Reimer grew up exhibiting male behaviour despite comprehensive socialising as a female. Even as he published his paper. Money was aware that his theory was wrong, but he suppressed inconvenient evidence. One would think that the social construct theory was in need of reappraisal, but your comments don’t indicate any hurry on the part of the academy.
Some info here: http://www.transgenderzone.com/library/pr/fulltext/43.htm
You conclude with a clumsy attempt to equate normal outward displays of female sexuality with three other things:
Using skin whiteners is an extreme behaviour akin to Apotemnophilia. I put it to you, that you can tell the difference between that and wearing lipstick. I’ll just say “slippery slope” and leave it at that.
FGM is a cultural practice that though independent of Islam has come to be associated with it in Africa and elsewhere. If patriarchy deems it preferable in Egypt and the Sudan, why not in Iran or even in England? Why is this practice labelled “male”? It’s not obvious why the patriarchal imperative doesn’t normalise the incidence in different geographies, even under the same culture dominances. It’s not clear why theocratic councils in Egypt, wholly dominated by men, should issue religious edicts against the practice, if it was their construct in the first place.
This study shows that the majority of men don’t want their females to be “circumcised”:
http://sti.bmj.com/cgi/content/abstract/79/3/220?siteid=bmjjournals&ijkey=y3KJ0eoIfHu82&keytype=ref
I’ve also seen evidence that male’s preference for anal intercourse increases when the partner is “circumcised”, further undermining the idea that it is done for men’s interests.
These facts are hardly conclusive proof for a primarily patriarchal explanation for FGM. One might question the motives of a person who clings to a simplistic explanation in the face of contrary evidence. You might also explain why several western feminists, in particular Germaine Greer, defend the practice of FGM?
Your final point concerns the wearing of hijab/burkah in western society. I can’t speak for America, but in the UK, the practice of wearing these (as opposed to a shalwar kameez) was almost unknown until recently. I do not claim to know the motivation behind every wearer and must presume that some do it for purely spiritual reasons. Nevertheless, it is clear that many wear it to indicate solidarity with theocratic extremism. I point to three well known examples:
Shabina Begum: This case entered the High Courts, generating large publicity. It transpired that the girl’s advisors (and perhaps her elder brother) were members of Hizb ut-Tahrir, an extremist Islamist organisation, outlawed in many countries. There is no evidence that she was forced to comply.
Aishah Azmi: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNTNWf5Q2Zo and her father: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/tm_headline=veil-storm-dad-s-old-class-rap-&method=full&objectid=17942898&siteid=94762-name_page.html were found to be linked to Tablighi Jamaat, another extremist group.
Hasina Patel, the wife of 7-7 suicide bomber Mohammad Sidique Khan:
http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2007/07_03/hussein270707_228x257.jpg
Note that such face coverings are banned partially or totally in many countries including Egypt, Turkey, Morocco etc. It is recognised that they are the apparel of extremists.
There is a western precedent for this. In the 1930s, many wore black shirts on demonstrations to express their solidarity with contemporary fascist movements. Many women supported fascist movements despite the apparent conflict with their own interests.
Insisting on an primarily patriarchal explanation of these phenomena is debilitating rather than illuminating. Unless you widen your scope of enquiry you cannot but fail to explain them. On a different note, comparing the treatment of women in plural western societies with culture originating from societies like Saudi Arabia or Iran and finding them equitable, is part of a regrettable trend in modern critical thinking. Your inclusion of them in this context strikes me as more asinine than profound. Have you never heard of Godwin’s law?
In Brazil, Suyá men wear lip plates. This contrasts with the practice of tribes in Africa, such as the Mursi, where the wearers are female. The practice involves the insertion of a large plate into a piercing below the lower lip, which results in distending of the face. It is impossible do this without prior dental extractions. Like high heels, it has a disabling effect upon the wearer; unlike high heels, they can’t be removed. I wonder, do the Suyá live in a matriarchal society and the Mursi a patriarchal society, or is it the other way round?
Dr Dawg – I couldn’t find the Dawkins critique you mention. I suspect South Park have already done the ultimate hatchet-job on him anyway.
I’ve just finished listening to Hitchens’ audiobook of “God Is Not Great”. My impression is, it’s easily the best of the recent run of atheist tomes.
Who’s being dismissive? You did indeed raise interesting points. But I have a distinct sense of déja vue all the same. The question around Madonna’s overt sexuality remains–assertion of strength or caving in to “the man?” (There’s a similar debate around hijab, incidentally.)
“Your theory needs to explain why women, who stopped during their college years, started wearing them again despite the influence of feminism. You might also speculate on why I don’t wear them!”
I’m not certain that I have a “theory” that fully explains the wheels within wheels on the issue of fashion. You are right, of course, to point out that matters are more complex than women simply being acted upon. I will admit that, in the interests of provoking discussion, I overstated the matter. But I would still maintain that sexual display/anti-display seems to be inordinately worn by one gender.
I’m aware of the Money controversy. This is only one case, almost sui generis. I’m not sure that the notion of gender as a social construct, as “performance,” is so easily overturned. One looks at Jan Morris and other “women trapped in men’s bodies,” and (at least in the Morris case, and in the case of one or two transsexuals I have met) the notion of what it is to “be a woman” seems like a caricature, at least to me.
My reference to skin lighteners and hair straighteners, referencing earlier comments I made, had to do, not with gender, but with “race.” I was making what I think is a reasonable analogy–are Black people seeking to look white evidencing something like “false consciousness?” Or is there some other explanation that works better? By the same token, are women who dress to be attractive to men making their choices in the context of a similar dynamic of unequal power relations, which will invariably shape those choices, or is there some other explanation?
Your study of attitudes towards FGM in Sudan was limited to university students. FGM is largely (not entirely) a rural practice. I have read enough on the subject to know that men from Jomo Kenyatta on down have promoted the practice. And that progressive African organizations like AAWORD have tried to find ways to stop it. (Germaine Greer is, quite frankly, scatty. But she doesn’t “defend” FGM so much as making a silly equivalence between FMM and male circumcision and claiming that silence on the latter and shouting about the former indicates an attitude of cultural superiority.)
On the issue of kumur or niqab or even the burka, there are similar wheels within wheels. I’d hinted as much a few comments back. I might even agree, in part, with your notion of religious solidarity as the motive for that choice, when choice there is. So we agree that it’s not as simple as women just being acted upon–that assumes that women themselves do not have agency–and yet I cannot bring myself to believe that, were there no patriarchy (in their case a religious one), women would choose to dress from head to toe in yards of black cloth in high summer. So, over all, I remain of the view that unequal power relations between men and women will, directly or indirectly, affect the choices that women make with respect to dress.
“On a different note, comparing the treatment of women in plural western societies with culture originating from societies like Saudi Arabia or Iran and finding them equitable, is part of a regrettable trend in modern critical thinking. Your inclusion of them in this context strikes me as more asinine than profound.”
I have done nothing of the kind, although one earliuer statement gave rise to that misunderstanding. When I was prompted to qualify that earlier statement, I made it plain that I do not regard the treatment of women under the Taliban (for example) as equivalent to the treatment of women in, say, Canada. I have simply made the observation that, when it comes to women’s clothing, women themselves make choices based upon existing power relations, which are not equal. I am not arguing that that’s all there is to it, but I would maintain that the sexuality of women is at issue, and patriarchy plays a considerable role in defining and controlling it. In Saudi Arabia, women are supposed to conceal themselves, so they won’t tempt men. In the West, women are supposed to reveal themselves, the better to be attractive to men. But men always figure in the equation, right?
“Have you never heard of Godwin’s law?”
Why, yes. What kind of a question is that? Whom have I called a Nazi in this discussion?
I knew about the Mursi, but had not heard before of the Suyá, whose men apparently connect the plates with oratory. In any case, I have never argued that bod mod is invariably gendered. Both the men and the women of the Botocudo people, again in Brazil, engaged in the practice. Until recently, it was men who got tattooed in our society. Now women do as well.
David:
Here you go:
http://solutions.synearth.net/2006/10/20
If gender is, as the postmodernists claim, a social construct (since everything is a social construct to them) then, doesn’t this mean that homosexuality is a social construct – and can be ‘educated’ out of an individual? The left, strong defenders of homosexuality, would deny this – wouldn’t they?
As for women revealing themselves to be ‘attractive to men’, well, we are a sexual species; we don’t reproduce asexually. Therefore, men always do figure in the equation. And so do women. Overt expressions of sexual availability are basic to our species.
By the way, in the Mursi society, it’s the men who display their overt sexuality, who paint themselves and display their beauty. I think the Body Shop a few years ago even had T-shirts with Mursi men.
Gosh, where to start. OK: Mursi men use white chalk on their otherwise naked bodies. Is this a sexual come-on? Convince me.
If we are a “sexual species,” why don’t men dress to be sexually attractive to women by walking about bare-chested and oiling themselves and so on? Why is it women who wear all the make-up, make themselves vulnerable by wearing high heels and so on?
[At this point, a disclaimer. I’m no sexual puritan. I’m part of this culture too; I find women in high heels attractive, for example. I’m simply trying to analyze a phenomenon in which one gender is overtly and consciously sexualized by dress and the other is not.)
As for homosexuality, it is precisely because we don’t essentialize homosexuality and heterosexuality that we find the need of some to force people to be “straight” so repulsive. I have no idea what makes people swing one way or the other, or in both directions, but the moralizing notion that one is right and the others are wrong is about as obvious a social construct as it gets.
Morning all. Heh. I do marvel at some of the tangents. This thread is not only long; it has a mighty girth.
Dr Dawg,
“Here you go.”
Um, thanks. Georges, I think it’s meant for you.
[ wheels jukebox into middle of room yet again ]
http://fp.ignatz.plus.com/MrSandmanfull.mp3
Morning all.
Gayness is a social construct? I’ve read arguments to that effect by Gore Vidal and Michel Foucault – both writers most people would think of as gay. Vidal says there are homosexual and heterosexual acts, but no homosexual and heterosexual people.
On the other hand one of my best friends is gay (or says he is), and says he always knew he was from being a young child. I don’t think his orientation could be socially constructed – except in the trivial sense that in a Robinson Crusoe like absence of any society, no one could practice either gay or straight sex. In societies where the possibility of heterosexual sex is removed (eg prison) you get straight people taking up gay sex because it’s the only sex on offer, of course. Still, I think homosexuality has at least some basis in nature, not just in culture. In the Eagleton quote I posted above, his big criticism of PoMo is precisely that it inflates culture out of all proportion and seeks to suppress nature altogether from any discussion of anything.
Gay culture IS a social construct. Just because a man likes c**k it doesn’t follow he also has to like musical theatre or Kylie Minogue. Many gay people I know resent their gayness being seen as the defining fact of their very being. For instance, John Cage was gay. We shouldn’t suppress or deny this. But if we’re discussing 4’33” as “gay music” then we’re really missing the point. I can’t see how there could be such a thing as “gay astronomy” (jokes about Uranus aside) or “gay mathematics”, even though, of course, there are gay astronomers and mathematicians.
Oh, and another thing.
How has the cultural relativist set gone from supporting Stonewall to supporting stoning of gays?
Georges,
“In the Eagleton quote I posted above, his big criticism of PoMo is precisely that it inflates culture out of all proportion and seeks to suppress nature altogether from any discussion of anything.”
It occurs to me that the implications of social construction can appeal to rather unsavoury motives. If a person’s tastes and disposition are primarily socially constructed, that person can also, presumably, be remade to suit society and its representatives. Such high-minded Agents of Society might even become “engineers of the human soul”, to borrow Stalin’s phrase.
The idea of innate disposition and talent is in some circles quite contentious, not least with regard to intelligence and its unequal distribution. This seems to cause unease in ways that, say, the unequal distribution of musical or athletic talent does not. It also undermines many conceptions of egalitarianism, which is probably why it causes such a fuss.
I evoked Godwin’s law, not because you called anyone a Nazi but because comparing FGM with wearing High Heels seemed to me to be an equivalent analogy. It is the final sentence in a paragraph observing “a regrettable trend…”. I thought that meaning was clear in the context but I see was wrong.
I don’t have time to fully engage but I will comment on “I’m aware of the Money controversy. This is only one case”.
I see you are aware of “falsifiability”. We observe that apples fall downwards and might posit a theory that apples will always fall down. This theory will never be proved by a billion apples falling downwards, but it will be disproved by one apple falling skywards. The Money case is surely the apple falling skywards for the social construct theory.
David
I like that quotation attributed to Napoleon – “you can do anything with bayonets… except sit on them”.
Consider this. The nations of eastern Europe lived under Communism for over forty years. During this time every aspect of life was subject to Stalinist ideology. Then in 1989 Gorbachev announced that the Red Army would never again be used to enforce it. Within a few months every one of those governments had collapsed and been replaced. Forty years and still it was only the Red Army holding the ideology together.
Georges,
Strange how often The Beautiful Dream entails emiseration, beggary and a relentless threat of force. Stranger still that these pointedly “egalitarian” societies should so often have godlike brutes to maintain them, from the Soviet’s “man of steel” to Mao and his radioactive halo.
http://davidthompson.typepad.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/mao.jpg
It’s almost funny, but not quite.
Dr. Dawg – the fact that Mursi men paint themselves to ‘show their beauty’ to the young women is indeed a sexual ‘come-on’. For the Mursi, this painting of the men is sexually attractive to the young girls.
The hiding of women under veils and yards of black clothing in Islamic society is equally sexual, for the desirable woman in that society is one defined as ‘hidden’ rather than ‘open’. The man is set up as sexually desirable if he is ‘macho’.
In our society, the sexually desirable male dresses a certain way; he doesn’t need to be half-naked, but dressed in a variety of types – from Redford, Wayne-as-cowboy to Connery as James Bond.
The fact of innate disposition is valid, if you believe in objective reality, but since the postmodernists reject objective reality then, they must reject innate dispositions. With this perspective, postmodernists readily align themselves with socialism, which is a utopian agenda of social engineering to ‘make’ the population into a certain type of behavior.
Dr. Dawg – the social perspective of a certain behavior as moral or amoral may or may not be a social construct, but that is not what we are talking about. We are talking about the causality of the behavior. Can sexuality be changed by ‘education’?
So many ideas. So little time.
Apologies for misreading precisely who it was who wanted the Harper’s reference. I must have being seeing double at that point. Anyway, comments about the piece would be welcome, from David, georges or anyone else.
On the notion of “gayness,” after much rumination I realize that I have caught myself essentializing it to some degree in formulations very much like this one: “On the other hand one of my best friends is gay (or says he is), and says he always knew he was from being a young child.” In my own case I realize that, from very young age, the opposite sex attracted me–although it’s a stretch so say that I somehow realized I *was* a heterosexual. One central question is whether these feelings are unmediated. I suggest not.
As a quick aside, we shouldn’t confuse “social constructs” with choice-making, but there seems to be some of that earlier in the thread. Social constructs are anything but conscious choices. Hence, the notion of “educating” a homosexual out of his or her homosexuality is an odd one: how would we do it? Could we educate a socialized male to become a “woman?” Bourdieu has a few ideas about the complexity of gender in his book on male domination. If I recall correctly, he thought that such phenomena as conscious-raising groups were barely scratching the surface. (I hope I am not confusing him with someone else on that last point.)
Was there any such thing as a “homosexual” until fairly recently in history? Homosexual acts, certainly–they’re proscribed in Leviticus. Georges himself raises what Foucault and Vidal had to say on the subject, but goes on to speak of orientation. But what, precisely, is an “orientation” made of? I’m not being facetious: hunger, for example, is real enough in every society and culture, but is expressed differently, named in various ways, mediated. Hence (for example) “gay culture.” And that anomalous goal, “same-sex marriage.”
Karen:
I thought that I was being implicitly criticized for minimizing FGM and other such practices by allegedly setting up an equivalence–not defining face-lifts and so on as equally horrendous. Hence the Godwin analogy escaped me–as it should have. I hope I have made very clear what I find similar and what I find excruciatingly different about such comparisons.
The Money matter maybe deserves its own thread. I did find a pretty good overview of the general issue here, from his debunkers: http://www.hawaii.edu/PCSS/online_artcls/intersex/ethics.html. Fascinating reading. I’m still digesting it. The notion of “inter-sex identity” is an interesting one. The research appears to show that the binary man/woman is faulty. Moreover, I don’t think that gynephilia, androphilia and ambiphilia come to us unmediated by culture. (What, for example, is a “girl’s toy?”) But surgical gender reassignment (in this artilce compared to FGM–small world) does not appear to do the trick.
What is most interesting of all, at least to me, is that gender reassignment surgeons are criticized for rigidly policing cultural expectations: “[T]he standard of practice represents, not humility at all, but a striking appropriation by doctors of the authority to use the arts of medicine to police the boundary between male and female in the defense of cultural norms.” So much for the notion of gender plasticity and nurture trumping nature: Money stands revealed, not as a cultural progressive, but as a reactionary after all!
But one final speculation, if I may. Money’s John/Joan/John lived on with his/her brother and parents, and had a life of therapy including hormone treatments. He/she would have had to have been cognitively impaired not to perceive that “something was going on.” Could there be some submerged memories of infant trauma? What cues was he/she getting during this upbringing? Having seen The Pinks and the Blues, about the acquisition of gender, it seems clear to me that these cues are fairly subtle. I wonder what might have happened to John if he had been brought up in some other household where his past was unknown–would he have wanted “boy’s toys” and dreamt of being a garbageman during his “young girl” stage?
old blockhead
I don’t agree with this:
“The hiding of women under veils and yards of black clothing in Islamic society is equally sexual, for the desirable woman in that society is one defined as ‘hidden’ rather than ‘open’.”
If that were true, we’d expect women who exposed more flesh to attract no attention at all from Muslim men. All the available evidence contadicts this. Google has revealed that Pakistan has the highest proportion of internet searches for internet porn of any country in the world, for instance.
No. What the veil means is that, under Islam, women are made responsible for mens’ sexual self-control. That’s why it’s not unusual to hear of certain Imams in Norway and Sweden declaring that women who don’t wear the veil – even non-Muslims – only have themselves to blame if they get raped by Muslim men.
old blockhead:
Do you have a reference to suggest that the white body paint is used by Mursi men to attract Mursi women?
I completely agree with you that there is a sexual aspect to the veil. Whether dress hides or reveals, it calls attention to the sexual.
I think I have already commented about the notion of “educating” people out of social constructs that are in fact very complex and run deeper than we know. Such “education” is a fool’s errand.
Finally, as a socialist with libertarian leanings, I don’t believe in “making” people build a better society–seems a bit of a contradiction in terms.
georges:
I disagree with you on the question of the veil. I think old blockhead (damn, these handles are starting to annoy me for some reason) is correct when he sees the veil as sexualizing. The lure of the concealed is, after all, not unknown even in our own culture. It’s overly binary to suggest that, in Muslim culture, if the veil has a sexual dimension then a revealed woman must not. Doesn’t follow.
Sorry, I put that last comment badly. What I meant to say was that georges is right to observe that the absence of a veil does not mean the absence of sexuality, but I don’t think that’s what old blockhead’s position entails.
Dr. Dawg – you can call me Old B, if you wish.
Yes, there’s an educational video on the Mursi, which shows the ceremonies of the young men of the Mursi, and specifically focuses on how and why they paint their bodies to attract young women.
What I meant by the veil is that it defines sexuality in (modern) Muslim society (it’s not in their religious edicts). An unveiled woman is equally sexual, but an amoral sexuality. And I completely agree with you, georges, that the imams put the responsibility for morality on the women; the men are viewed as ‘savage beasts’. That’s equally sexual.
Thank you, Old B. 🙂
Very much on topic, here are a couple of short extracts from letters appearing in today’s Globe & Mail (Toronto), in response to an article advising “proper” dress for women in the office:
“At first I thought it was a joke, telling women at work to cover their breasts completely and even wear nipple covers. But no, the author accepts sexualized hetero-male domination to the point of condoning things that are unhealthy.”
“To assume that men are incapable of not looking at a woman’s bosom simply because it is not shrouded in silicone cups and opaque cloth is a position that Taliban men have stated for covering women from head to toe. It’s not the women’s fault that men stare at their breasts: it is the men who need to be reformed if they can’t control themselves.”
Surely, Dr. Dawg, you don’t agree with the sophistry of these letters to the Globe and Mail?
Why is it unhealthy to wear clothing that covers the breasts? And why is this evidence of male domination?
Sexuality is a reality; it’s a fact within most reproductive systems on this earth. For a woman to ignore this fact, and show her sexuality while expecting the other sex not to show his (by reacting to her sexuality) is, in itself, an action of dominance over the male. The woman is effectively saying – “Here I am, presented as a sexual being, and you must not react to me unless and until I permit you to do so. You are under my domination”.
Dr Dawg
Your argument about homosexuality reminds me of the anti-psychiatry argument about schizophrenia. Szasz argues that a schizophrenic is not suffering from a physical brain impairment in the way that, say, a stroke victim is. She is simply behaving outside social norms. For Szasz schizophrenia is a social construct in a way that CJD or Alzheimer’s Disease is not.
I think future developments in science will have a bearing on this argument. Right now, if you show a competent neurologist a brain scan of a patient with late stage CJD, even without disclosing anything about that person’s behaviour, she will know that the patient has the condition. I think it’s possible that one day Schizophrenia will be detectable like that – purely from MRI scans and so forth. Of course showing that a schizophrenic has something different about the wiring of her brain doesn’t mean she has a brain impairment, any more than left-handedness is a brain impairment. But it would prove that Szasz is wrong, and that schizophrenia is not just a social invention.
Moving to homosexuality. First, please note: I am not saying that gayness equals illness. I suspect it’s more like left-handedness. Its manifestations may be socially mediated. But I still suspect that there’s something in the genes and/or the brain that predisposes some people to homosexual desire.
We all feel hunger. But whether we hunger for pizza, curry, sushi, kangaroo or dog depends on our social/cultural conditioning. True. But not all such cravings and aversions are like this. Everyone with rabies develops hydrophobia, whether they come from the Sahara desert or Bora Bora. The hydrophobia is 100% non-cultural. It’s directly caused by the action of the encephalitis on the brain. No doubt a PoMo theorist will say that a French rabies sufferer has Evian hydrophobia, a Swede Rammlosa hydrophobia and so on. It’s this kind of argument – that everything is culture and nothing is nature – that Eagleton is attacking – quite rightly, in my view.
The first writer goes on to argue the health issue thus:
“Women’s breasts need to move some. There is research suggesting that binding and exerting constant pressure on them is bad for the lymphatic system. Indeed, apart from fashion’s constrictions, women don’t need bras unless their breasts are big or they are engaged in sports that are rather uncommon in offices. Work interactions aren’t determined by clothing alone. If men misbehave because of it, they are the true office boobs.”
On the issue of power, I have already noted that these things are never as simple as a one-way mechanistic imposition. I knew a hooker once who insisted that in her work she was in control, giving as little as possible for as much money as possible. She didn’t go on to generalize, however. She was acutely aware, for example, that in discussions, an idea from a woman would be often ignored, then heard by the group when a man repeated it.
Do women who fail to shroud themselves in the office impose that kind of control upon men, as you suggest–the “mixed messages” argument? Or are they simply wearing what society accepts as “looking nice,” and paying the price of the sexualization that fashion dictates? Do men in cultures where bare breasts are the norm stare at them constantly? Must women (as you earlier noted) take responsibility for men’s attitudes?
Women, I recall, were once burned because religious men were aroused when seeing them–obviously the work of the devil. Plus ça change…
I agree that veiling is all about sexual meaning. I just think you’ve got that meaning wrong. The original formulation was, the more thoroughly veiled the woman, the more insatiable the resulting male appetite – as if a buqua was the ultimate in arousing Ann Summers type lingerie for a Muslim man.
A woman in a burqua is advertising her chastity, her piety and her “modesty”. Not her sexual availability.
georges:
You’ve raised the crux of the matter–and, frankly, I don’t know enough to be hard-line on the “everything is culture” position. I agree that, in any culture, severing the carotid artery will likely lead to a quick death. That’s “pre-social” enough. Conceiving of it, or talking about it, is culturally mediated. But that doesn’t mean that in some cultures such an injury would be of no effect.
So, when it comes to sexual desire, are there tendencies and predispositions of the body that are anterior to culture and discourse? Or is it all performance? I am sceptical of the latter. (I believe that Foucault, too, did not reduce everything to discourse.) I do think that it’s a good precaution, though, to avoid the “hard-wired” hypothesis for human behaviour if at all possible. That way sociobiology lies.
Incidentally, I think Szasz and Laing had a lot of good insights, and the current psychiatric practice of simply administering chemicals has a lot wrong with it. Having met a schizophrenic, though, I don’t see schizophrenia as a voyage of discovery. Perhaps it, like measles, is an illness after all. I rather think that it is.
[ straightens tux and wheels jukebox gently into position ]
http://fp.ignatz.plus.com/boc1.mp3
Ah, classy.
georges – I hope you aren’t attributing to me the opinion that ‘the more thoroughly veiled the woman, the more insatiable the male appetite’. I certainly don’t agree with that.
My view is that sexuality is a priori, ie, natural; our species reproduces sexually. Therefore, we naturally react to bodily displays.
We then add cultural ideas about ‘good’ and ‘bad’ sexuality, which includes bodily displays. These evaluations are linked to the results of sex, ie, children. In the Islamic world, the veiled woman is sexually ‘good’; the unveiled is sexually ‘bad’.
Dr. Dawg – women are not passive slaves to fashion (which you insist is the domain of men. I know that this ‘meme’ is part of your stock ideology, but, it’s many years out of date.
And women are as capable as men of ignoring ideas from other women, and batting their mascara at a man who says the same thing.
If women in the office are dressing provocatively, then, they have the intention-to-sexually-provoke. They have to take responsibility; they aren’t, forever, passive slaves.
By the way, you seem to have a tendency to sit on the fence; you’ll assert that it’s all a ‘social construct’ and then, when confronted, you’ll back off and accept that some behaviour might be non-social..but then, slip in the idea that if you go too far – that’s sociobiology. You are, like the fog, everywhere, aren’t you?
I agree. There’s a tendency to define unhappiness as a medical condition. What makes me unhappy – a bereavement, an unhappy love affair, being sacked – will alter my brain chemistry. And a drug may counter the effects of that alteration. But having a broken heart isn’t the same kind of thing as having diabetes.
I don’t think that’s particularly fair. I have never stated that *everything* is a social construct, although such things as a severed artery are mediated by the social. I did not say, however, that some *behaviour* is pre-social. I am trying to choose my words carefully–I allowed that something like sexual desire might be, but how that translates into behaviour is entirely social. On women’s fashions, my comments indicate somewhat more nuance than you are asserting. “Passive slaves?” When did I say any such thing?
I think any good insight, or set of insights, pushed to the extreme, become blinkers. I reject that all-or-nothing binary approach. If that’s “sitting on the fence,” so be it.
“I have never stated that *everything* is a social construct, although such things as a severed artery are mediated by the social.”
To clarify: we can only conceive of a “severed artery” through images and language that are social in origin. In that sense “everything” is indeed constructed. But we still die when we bleed out.
The symbolic terms we use to refer to that artery are most certainly socially constructed, but, those terms had better acknowledge not only that there is an objective reality out there (that severed artery)but the terms must represent that objective reality in a real, ie, reliable and valid, sense.
Those terms require no such acknowledge–the latter is superfluous. The notion “a severed artery” “danger” death” and so on are sufficient without bringing the Ding an sich into it. The poor fellow would bleed to death while you’re off searching for it. 🙂
“acknowledgement.” Sorry.
Trying to see the bigger picture behind this discussion…
I think PoMo is already on the wane. It feels tired and familiar. And unhelpful for the issues we now face.
First there’s Global Warming. Whatever your opinion about this, whether you think it’s the worst crisis ever to face humanity, or something that’s been hyped out of all proportion by green scaremongers, it’s forcing nature back to the centre of our thinking.
Second there’s the impending energy crunch. Are we nearing Peak Oil? How will the arrival of China and India as major industrial powers add to this? What are the alternative fuels? Again, we’re forced to confront the brute facts of nature.
Third, there’s the impact new developments in science – especially the life sciences – are going to have on us. Neuroscience and genetics may well change our way of thinking about ourselves in the 21st century as much as Darwin did in the 19th.
I also notice that cultural relativism is going rapidly out of fashion in government. European states in particular, facing rapidly expanding ghettoes of culturally unassimilated Muslims, are reverting to integrationist policies. Would-be immigrants to the previously hyper-liberal Netherlands are now being shown videos of gay men kissing and topless women, as a way of saying “if you have a problem with this, don’t come and live here”.
The more I reflect upon it, the more that I don’t find PoMo an entirely new set of ideas. Look at Hans Vaihinger in 1924: “…the object of the world of ideas as a whole is not the portrayal of reality – this would be an utterly impossible task – but rather to provide us with an instrument for finding our way about more easily in the world.” Hear, hear! Proceeding “as-if” isn’t that far removed from Rorty’s pragmatism. And so we can tackle global warming, peak oil, neuroscience and, for that matter, severed arteries, without having to have a discussion of epistemology and metaphysics first.
We should be wary, I think, of dismissing cultural relativism out of hand. CR doesn’t equate to rigid, essentialist notions of “multiculturalism.” Nor does it mean moral relativism, nor David’s “cultural equivalence.” At its best, CR is a tool for understanding a culture on its own terms. Boas rejected the idea of comparative anthropology because he, rightly I think, considered those enterprises in his day to be suspect, and often racist. But that doesn’t entail the view that all cultures are the same, or that we shouldn’t make judgments about cultural practices. I think I mentioned this some time ago, but were we to take CR to extremes, we couldn’t criticize the German tribe in the 1930s and 1940s for perpetrating the Holocaust.
I think forced integration makes no more sense than the artificial boxes created by official multiculturalism. Just let things be, while noting for immigrants what life in their new country offers (and doesn’t). The Dutch approach is a little self-conscious, but I’m not sure I have that much difficulty with it.