[email protected] wrote: > > > You can crudely say that we identify with "power" -- but it's more complex > and deep and interesting than that. No art is possible without this process > of identification, imitation, and transcendence. No maturity is possible > without this process. > > So ponder for a moment what it means that the entire U.S. now is in the > position of identifying with a black man, his wife, and kids for at least > four (and probably eight) years.
I simply do not know what it means to "identify" with someone. I doubt very much that anyone has ever "identified" with any presiedent. I doubt very much that it would have been a very useful way to describe the members of the Nazi party in Germany during the 30s. It is difficult to find any passage in pre-modern writing that suggests any concern with "identity" other than as a place-marker: That is, when Socrates quoted the motto of the oracle, "Know Yourself," he was simply echoing the sljogan of Aristocratic power: Know your place. And even within capitalism, the concept of "identity" seems mostly something humanist professors or some psyichiatric cults concern themselves with, not something that tells us much about masses of people or what will or will not move them to action. Now large masses of liberal and well-intentioned whites will not "identify" with anyone in the White House now any more than they did in the past. But what they will do is say to themselves, Hurray, racism is no more. See, we've got a black president. That proves that we aren't racist anymore. So we can leave it to the cops to take care of those 10s of millions of blacks in central cities." That's a bit crude, but less crude than the idea that a black in the whitehouse is going to magically transfrom u.s. life and politics. Carrol _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
