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my reply with darkie toothpaste example. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Charles Faulkner via Marxism" <marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> To: "Charles Faulkner" <lacena...@comcast.net> Cc: "Marxism Serve" <marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> Sent: Friday, January 16, 2015 8:25:50 AM Subject: Re: [Marxism] If Charlie is racist, then so am I by Zineb el- Rhazoui ******************** POSTING RULES & NOTES ******************** #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. ***************************************************************** Aside from death of the author considerations which in my view are irrelevant, I don't think she's grounding her case on the lack of subjective racism in the magazine's members, but in the context and social purpose in which the magazine existed and to which it was deployed. It's one thing to say that one can be antiracist and produce racist content by accident, it's another thing to say so when this content is being used by antiracists to combat racism. At that point we need some kind of means to determine how content produced by antiracists to combat racists and taken up for this purpose can still be racist. yes, i hope that death of author considerations are irrelevant. but that wasn't the limit of beardsley's argument. it also applied when the artist herself was unaware of her intent or worse, deceptive. the upshot was that the work stands on its own quite aside from the intent an artist had when it was made. beardsley concluded that criticism was impossible if we had to rely solely on author intention. so when we actually have the artist's intentions expressed we have a complication, not a solution. when i was on tour in southeast asia in the marine corps (post vietnam, boat people and killing fields) i often saw darkie toothpaste. my apologies for the content but for those who are unaware of its existence here is a wikipedia link with an image ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darlie ). now if our asian friends mention that it was a harmless image only intended to sell a helpful product for oral hygiene, i hope we would have a response quite aside from standard rhetoric about capitalism. i am quite willing to accept that there is a difference between racist art employed by a racist and racist art employed by an an anti-racist but both are offences if only of different degree. Well, the key in these distinctions is, in my view, to articulate a case for distinguishing criticism of Islamists, criticism of Islam, and racism. If you think all criticism of Islam is per se and necessarily racist, then sure, she's obfuscating. I personally can't subscribe to that position though. i don't. religion is simply a fact. it goes well beyond simple accusations of oppression. we atheists on the left need to get over ourselves with our pious superiority. we are the minority. denigrating religion with offensive caricatures of its believers is a doomed project. if we want to claim moral superiority over religious hierarchy, we must demonstrate respect for all people and condemn goofy ethnic images. I think she addresses this fairly adequately when she refers to the oppression secularists and women suffer in the maghreb. Now if your view is that this is secondary, or irrelevant, on the light of oppression of racial or religious minorities in Europe, you may still consider that she's somehow betraying herself. I'm really dubious of propositions like this, first because I don't consider religious identities worth much, but second because people aren't singly constituted by the fact of coming from an area with a given hegemonic religious background. It would be like accusing Rosa Luxemburg of being antisemite and anti-polish, since both as a Jew and as a Pole she made a firm case against religious identities (judaism and catholicism). It also gives no room for recognition that such religious identities aren't the end of a person and can themselves be oppressive. In my opinion she makes this case better than I can hope to, though. having been oppressed and then siding with "liberators" who are also oppressors isn't so uncommon. i haven't gone back to her text yet but she also uses techniques of distraction. one such, her claim of being married to a black man. it reminds me somewhat of jarheads i knew who married locals, made claims of purity of racial thought with proof in their marriage and then went on to express some of the most unlightened racist garbage i've heard in my life. and i've dealt with klan dialogue! i'm not saying she's being racist herself but maybe, just maybe, her defence of charlie hebdo, at a time that it was being criticized for it's racism, is little more than locating the butter on bread. Sure, and all the more likely if the left doesn't come to its senses and stops this reflexive defence of religion. who would you say is doing this? best regards. _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/lacenaire%40comcast.net _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
