best of Bhabha's worst <fwd>

[el don]

here's a good example of the discussion i mentioned
in my earlier post in reply to mike's 'any comments?'


L.

-----
alexanne don
fukuoka
japan



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>Date:         Thu, 14 Jan 1999 01:16:13 -0800
>Reply-To: Kyle Norwood <norwood-holloway at worldnet.att.net>
>Sender: Philosophy and Literature <PHIL-LIT at listserv.tamu.edu>
>From: Kyle Norwood <norwood-holloway at worldnet.att.net>
>Subject:      Re: best of Bhabha's worst
>To: PHIL-LIT at listserv.tamu.edu
>
>Scott Sterling's scathing account and David Fisher's charitable
>interpretation of Butler's sentence are both instructive in their own
>ways.  (I'm in awe of what David was able to do with "repetition,
>convergence, and rearticulation"--namely, "(1) repetition of power
>interaction patterns among between agents, and/or (2) the joining
>together of different forces at a specific point of time, or and/or
>(3) a series of new ways to express such relationships."  David, what
>text have you and Butler both read that allows you to fill in her
>blanks with such confidence here?)
>
>Basically, though, I've got to agree with Scott.  Having taught a lot
>of first-year composition courses lately, I'd say that Butler is using
>the same tricks that some incoming college students use to try to make
>their writing sound important and difficult, out of fear that their
>underlying ideas are too simple to stand on their own merits.  For
>example, like a young student or old bureaucrat, Butler avoids using
>verbs to name actions or using subjects to name agents.  She also
>avoids giving any specific examples of the abstract processes she
>describes.  Here are some things I'd need to know in order to
>translate her sentence precisely:
>
>"The move . . ." (By whom?  Marxists?  "Theorists"?  Republican
>congressmen?)
>
>". . . from a structuralist account . . ." (Of what exactly?  Society?
>Power?)
>
>" . . .in which capital is understood . . ." (By whom?
>Structuralists?  Capitalists?)
>
>" . . . to structure social relations . . ."  (Which ones?  All social
>relations everywhere, including, say, every last nuance of social
>relations in the mountains of Bhutan?)
>
>" . . . in relatively homologous ways . . ."  (Does "homologous" mean
>anything more than "similar" here?  "Homologous" suggests similarity
>in _structure_, but Butler's verb "structure" has already limited the
>similarities to structural ones, so the word "homologous" seems both
>pretentious and redundant.  And what can I say about that
>"relatively"?  Amid all these nebulous abstractions, to add the
>cautious word "relatively" in front of "homologous" seems comical:
>what is there to be cautious about?  It also blurs the one semi-clear
>distinction that the sentence was trying to make--for how are we to
>tell a structure formed in "relatively [but not completely] homologous
>ways" from a structure that is and has been "subject to rearticulation
>[but is not necessarily rearticulated yet]"?  Isn't this the sort of
>blurred opposition that caused people to "move" from structuralism to
>Derrida?)
>
>" . . . to a view of hegemony in which . . ."  Well, I think my point
>is clear.
>
>And yet, having been subjected to this kind of writing (and these
>sorts of theoretical assumptions) for years now, I do feel as though I
>"sort of" know what Butler means, and I imagine a lot of Phil-litters
>feel the same way.  Butler is just barely intelligible, probably for
>the same reasons that my more jargon-haunted first-year comp students
>are:  because, beneath the layers of jargon, she's saying something
>rather simple and predictable.  David Fisher's rewrite has its
>merits--his background in this sort of writing is obviously more
>extensive than mine--but I think Butler's point can be stated more
>plainly than David does:
>
>"Back when we cutting-edge left-wing theorists were all
>structuralists, we used to contend that capitalism causes social
>relations to be structured in relatively unvarying ways.  But we have
>changed our minds; we now believe that the structures which 'hegemony'
>imposes on social relations change over time and vary from place to
>place.  The powerful ('hegemonic') groups that impose social
>structures must adapt their strategies of dominance to the
>circumstances of particular times and places."
>
>Or, more simply:  "We used to take the reductive position that all
>power structures are essentially the same, but we have now 'moved' to
>the common-sense view that power structures change and that time and
>place make a difference."
>
>Well, I guess it's clear why Butler wouldn't want to say _that_.  My
>first-year composition students would understand Butler's rhetorical
>stance perfectly.  I wonder if her adherents--many of whom have no
>doubt become composition teachers--understand it half so well.
>
>All best,
>
>Kyle Norwood
>
>Los Angeles, California
><norwood-holloway at worldnet.att.net>
>