5o 133t
A couple of years ago the Guardian published an article of Jessica Valenti’s of memorably annoying vacuity – I distinctly recollect muttering “oh, for fuck’s sake” to myself whilst reading it, the way I used to with everything of Tanya Gold’s until she unexpectedly turned quite good. Here’s the opening paragraph:
Trust me on this one – when you’re a feminist, day-to-day life is better. You make better decisions. You have better sex. I have a job that I love that I owe to feminism (as a writer and one of the founders of feministing.com). I have an amazing group of women friends who spend their days speaking out against sexist idiocy – and who also happily dance their asses off with me when we’re out clubbing. Where criticisms about my loud, opinionated ways might bother me if I wasn’t a feminist, the fact that I am means that I know that there’s nothing wrong with me, but only with a world that doesn’t want women to speak their minds. And I have better relationships. In fact, as I was getting ready for the photoshoot for this article, the guy I’m dating (who also calls himself a feminist) tidied up for me so the photographer wouldn’t see what a tip my apartment is at the weekends. Would my pre-feminist boyfriends have done that? I don’t think so.
I find it difficult to imagine ever being friends with anyone who didn’t find this unbearable. Much of the difficulty comes from not knowing how I could ever explain why I myself found it unbearable to someone who didn’t just automatically get it. The passage above is so demoralisingly PR-perky as to sap almost all the energy required to make the transition from sub-vocalised impatience to coruscating retort.
Fortunately, IT thought it worth the (heroic) necessary effort; and her One-Dimensional Woman does a fine job of reading Valenti’s fatuous advertising copy as an ideological symptom, a sign of the times. Valenti’s response demonstrates perfectly the hostility to thought, the pre-emptive smothering of imagination, that shields the reality-system with which her putative feminism seeks to accommodate itself. Accusations of “elitism” are not only the last but also, invariably, the immediate resort of those who have accepted the capitalist injunction to “live without ideas” (as Badiou puts it). No further argument will ever be produced.
“Elitists” are those whose thought is abstract because it is concerned with the deadly abstractions which dominate our lives, and because it aims at a future incompatible with our dominated present. In point of fact, Nina’s writing is far more urgently and hectically involved with the “bodies and languages” of our common world than the most lavishly anecdotal self-help book; but it also, as Natalie Hanman rightly identifies, turns the intense focus of the “theoretical lens” on that world, in order to burn a hole through its apparent self-evidence and inevitability. This is the task of an “elite” from which everyone is equally excluded by the demand that we remain without ideas: an “elite” that already includes all of us insofar as we are capable of participating in thought.
January 20th, 2010 at 3:34 am
“Elitists” are those whose thought is abstract because it is concerned with the deadly abstractions which dominate our lives, and because it aims at a future incompatible with our dominated present”
Exactly. Their trouble is they have no analysis of Capital, it’s just considered a background feature. The problem is therefore reduced to being a longue durée misunderstanding – if only we could realise how profitable reducing sexism could be for everyone!
Except of course it wouldn’t be for capital, for which the division and differences have proved functional (and so been incorporated and reproduced) in the course of its development.
All of the ‘empower yourself’ stuff is of a piece with all the post-68 libertarian discourses found in management theory, silicon valley and every other (especially US) middle class redoubt where the cool and comfortable polish their beautiful souls whilst thinking others should tighten their bootstraps.
Of particular note is these people’s continual confusion of civic action with collective action – their strategies always amount to the former, but they like the aura of the latter term.
(There’s something to be said here on the massive currency the term ‘justice’, often prefixed, has acquired in recent years. Not to mention ‘the movement’ as branding for what couldn’t be less mass-based activities, and the appeal to the individual so-called ‘political act’ as a signalling of preference like setting a price, no collaboration required.)
They remain caged in the institutions and discourses that sustain the continual reproduction of their enemy, and accept without negotiation the strategic field presented to them by that enemy – because they can’t see they’re prisoners.
January 20th, 2010 at 4:20 am
That was actually published in The Guardian? I suddenly don’t feel quite as embarassed about the detrital, “left-liberal” waste paper printed on this side of the Atlantic. No, I’m still embarassed.
January 20th, 2010 at 9:47 am
“Elitists” are those whose thought is abstract because it is concerned with the deadly abstractions which dominate our lives, and because it aims at a future incompatible with our dominated present”
You’re right, it is a deadly abstraction that dominates our lives: however, I think that this deadly abstraction can manifest itself in specific aspects of everyday experience that must be appreciated in more visceral terms than “capital”.
It’s rather like another debate: scientists can repeat their hyper-abstract theories of global warming in hyper-abstract terms but if it remains open for whatever republican ideologue to say: “Then why is it so cold today? QED” then it’s largely a waste of time. There needs to be that connection, which I guess is what you mean by the ‘theoretical lens’ rather than pure theory.
Anyhoo, that is what I thought was so great about I.T’s book: not the triumphant conclusions but the deft connections.
January 20th, 2010 at 12:42 pm
Not the most important point here, by any means (apologies in advance for being so trivial) – but – but – Tanya Gold turned *good*?!
Anyway, am looking forward to reading Power’s book. Even more so now.
January 20th, 2010 at 6:58 pm
What’s equally horrible about Valenti’s blog post in response is:
1. The boilerplate internet responses she deploys beyond the accusation of elitism that barely correlate with a single thing IT wrote – you didn’t really read what I wrote! you’re just on an ego trip!.
2. The high-fiving comments from the true believers.
3. That one guy who posted this:
“Let me second one of [a previous commenter's] points: the line “Everybody deserves to have feminism on their lives” is one of the simplest, most beautiful statements about politics and empowerment I have ever heard.”
(PS. Seriously, Dominic, what happened with Prolegomenon and Records on Ribs!)
January 20th, 2010 at 9:15 pm
So far as I know, they’re putting it out this year!
January 26th, 2010 at 12:47 am
This extract from Valenti’s piece (I’ve no idea who she is) turns my stomach & it becomes all the more difficult to hold down with her accusations of elitism. What exudes from her up-beat drivel is the utterly unreflective smugness of an actual socio-economic elite. I can’t help thinking about the legions of women who do the underpaid, part-time, menial work that give the likes of Valenti the freedom to enjoy the benefits of feminism.
Presumably her alternative to IT’s elitist feminism is this willfully dumb, de-politicised version?
February 16th, 2010 at 7:14 pm
Totally with you on the Valenti “rebuttal”. She didn’t even bother to read the book! It’s embarrassing that somebody would find Power’s wonderfully well-written text “elitist” or “inaccessible”.