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Date: 11/6/96 6:19 AM
To: Geoffrey Williams
From: xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu
Hello Jay, Pam, and everybody--
I think Jay and I (and some other people) are involved in what I'd
half-seriously call as "creative misunderstanding" of each other. It seems
to me that we transcend each other's positions by using the boundary between
them as the points of their growth.
Jay wrote,
>Eugene offers some good points regarding the complex issue of
>positionality and social interaction. Perhaps our difference is
>largely one of optimism (for him) vs. pessimism (mine).
I agree. I don't see the (US) Congress as a body of egoistic, self-interests
individualists as Jay seems to see,
> I don't, however, for a
>moment believe that the Congress of men who approved votes for
>women in the U.S. consisted of very many males who were doing
>this because they were seeing the situation from a female (or
>feminine) point of view. More likely most of them were
>calculating self-interest and politicking their votes in a
>complex and very culturally masculine game of 'winning'
>something. I'd be more ready to believe that a Congress of women
>actually had some empathy for another gender and some altruistic
>motives ... or maybe not a Congress, maybe just a random sample
>of American women. The life-trajectories that lead to Congress
>don't seem to me terribly consistent with picking up a lot of
>non-masculine dispositions.
I belief that congressmen did and do calculate their self-interests and did
and do politics (otherwise they would have been rather stupid people, I
think), but I also believe that they are not evil demons and they did and do
look for their own integrity, compassion, and doing right things. I think
at different times under different circumstances they differently
prioritize(d) the goals spelled above. Yes, I think that the US Congress
care much more about rich people than about poor people (however, it cares
about poor people as well). I think it is extremely important not to
demonize (or idealize) people especially enemies or opponents. Like,
probably, Jay, I often find myself considering the US Congress as my opponent.
Let me describe how I see our seemingly paradigmic differences. I warn that
I may caricature Jay's position so I hope his latter input corrects me.
1) I don't like Jay's, seems to be, reduction of the cross-boundary
identification like "I (a white male) am a feminist" to the issue of
representation (i.e., how well I as a white male can feel, think, perceive,
and behave as a woman or just know women's concerns). I believe that
between-group boundaries can be built, reified, renegotiated, or washed away
by sociocultural practices and relationships. In sum, I believe, to be a
feminist, you do not need feel, think, or behave as a woman or even to be
aware of all women's concerns. For me, to be a feminist means to include my
and other people's relationship with women in, what I consider, my integrity
with the world. This means that my or other people's sexist behavior will
hurt me. And I don't need even know all the time how sexist behavior is
defined -- I trust in my fellow men and women to point me at it.
2) But even if we consider the practice of representation, I feel I still
disagree with Jay. It seems to me Jay reduces the notion of representation
to merely "replacement" via other person perspective taking. Jay wrote,
>All in all, I still doubt that we can take the viewpoint of
>someone who's life history and most formative experiences have
>been radically different from our own, and I believe that such
>trajectories and dispositions do tend on the average to be more
>divergent across positional categories than within them.
For me, the practice of representation means "mediating," i.e., bring people
in contact by whatever means available. For doing that I do not need to
double the representing person. For example, when my American colleagues
ask me about Il'enkov, do not try to resurrect Il'enkov, but to hook the
people to my experience of Il'enkov by translating relevant quotes I found
in his texts or providing summary of this theories through my own concerns
and interests as well as relationship with the people who inquired about
Il'enkov. This is quit different from "mindreading" or
"mind-reconstruction" that I think is impossible since mind grounded in
body, time, space, history, and so on (on this point I completely agree with
Jay).
As to the political example of the (US) Congress, I believe that
representational democracy works not merely through election but mainly
through lobbying as a form of constant participation in the decision making
process. Election is mainly defines what it defines: who is in, who is out.
The political decision making process is defined by participation. I
believe that in the US (as many other places) participation (e.g., lobbying)
gets corrupted because it gets ignored by the people (i.e., voters) by not
participating in it.
Sorry for my political speculations,
Eugene Matusov
UC Santa Cruz
------------------------
Eugene Matusov
UC Santa Cruz
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Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 12:29:48 -0700
To: xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu, X-MCA Discussion List Group <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
From: Eugene Matusov <ematusov who-is-at cats.ucsc.edu>
Subject: Collaboration & representation
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