Dispatches from the twilight zone · 2 September 2008
First Day of School, Pop Quiz. Short Answer. Please define the following in 40 words or less.
New Age Spirituality:
Use of exotic practices and churingas to (1) decorate the ego or (2) flee the self. Based in fear, irrationality. Potentially transformational if (1) creates community or (2) induces peaceful altered states. Creates psychosis when repressed issues return.
A ha.(colloq., Boulder, CO):
A moment of unanticipated grace in the flow. E.g., In third series, consider that SKPJ’s edict “straight arms!” means a straight ninety-degree angle. Suddenly it’s about sucking into the solar plexus and letting yourself float, not just building linebacker shoulders to muscle through.
Campaign Themes:
Dems—Come Together “God to be good looking cos he’s so hard to see”
GOP—Stop Children, What’s That Sound “It starts when you’re always afraid”
Privacy; a.k.a. “family matters are not political matters”:
When women and men get to make own decisions about pregnancy and birth control. When a certain young woman “makes the decision on her own to keep the baby.” Diametric opposite of what John McCain and Sarah Palin want for you.
Vagina Police:
Focus on the Family; abstinence-only education; I would “oppose abortion even if my own daughter was raped;” etc. Giving new meaning to the Sept 2 holiday of VJ Day.
Cynicism:
A woman candidate chosen to reaffirm patriarchy at the highest level; “call for action” instead of taking action when own party controls government; making this NOT ABOUT THE WAR; pre-emptive protester arrests; being anti-polar bear; climate change is natural
(0v0), Ovo:
An OK combination in times of hard physical work, but only if (0v0) is showering after practice. For three days and three night after ovo, (0v0) experiences “BO.”
BO:
Not sure. Ask the Editor.
The Editor:
Earning his name one high sign at a time. Making up for it with qualities which have been edited from this document.
September:
An intensely beautiful, spare, quickly fleeting species. Further classification incomplete.
Posted by (0v0)
Categories: astanga yoga
, markets-networks-society
, spirituality
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Er… Did not mean to imply that “family matters are not political matters” is actually a progressive line. It’s a good line of defense against Vagina Police—because they want to colonize others with their rules, no questions asked.
But from a broader perspective, the personal is political. Childcare, abortion, birth control, and the motherhood/public leadership relationship have been sucessfully tagged “non-political” as a way of creating a “public” sphere that is “man’s world.” Making the work and experience of women “non-issues” and pretending this is not inter-related to relationships with men is the basic accomplishment of patriarchy. It allows men to create a politics not about everyday relationship and life, but about bombing stuff. Accountability and empathy are lost. Politics becomes, shall we say, “yang.”
It’s tempting to see the present drama as tawdry and sick becasue it’s about matters that shouldn’t be made political. The gore is more a result of the character of the media—Maureen Dowd’s misogynist metanarrative has been the most-read article in the Times three days running. And the result of the fact that it’s being used to drown out the most hopeful and inspiring progressive political moment of my generation—that’s kind of horrifying. But the the other source of the uncanny feeling of discomfort is that discussion of “private” politics is SO subversive that the first reaction is to dismiss it as trashy and a distraction. It’s “trashy” to merge private and public matters only the same way it’s trashy to blur any boundary—between “races,” social classes, ethnicities, or whatever apparent opposites.
It’s actually almost time to incorporate all these matters into public politics. Not exactly this time, place or manner, but as soon as enough women are actually in the erstwhile man’s world that our different experience has to be integrated into public understanding. Then the blurring of this problematic public/private boundary sort of has to happen. (This doesn’t have to mean that choice stops being personal… just that its social nature can be reckoned with even as the social doesn’t determine it.)
For now, the boundary—itself an invention of patriarchy—is a useful defense against the Vagina Police. (They don’t want to kill the “private sphere” for the sake of dialogue of individual situation and social situation: they want control and patriarchy—a “private sphere” that is both voiceless and fully regulated by the public sphere.) That’s all I was saying above.
Posted by: (0v0) · Sep 2, 02:57 PM · #
hey Owl,
well, I’m worn out from watching the Rep convention, but I’m going to attempt a comment anyway. The convention left me feeling sad. I was struck by the emphasis on military (ie: WAR) and “faith based” this and “faith based” that. And, of course, the right to life. The hatred for Obama was frightening and disheartening. But anyway, what I wanted to write a comment about is how I find it amusing and infuriating that the Republicans trot out Palin and brag that they could put a woman on the ticket, but they make sure to say that she’s a hunter, that she played basketball and was nicknamed “the barracuda”, that she’s in charge of the Nat’l Guard, and other things that are characteristically thought of as male dominated areas… as if she can’t be tough (like Hilary can be tough) without describing her in ways that would appeal to men who might not trust a woman in any high position of authority. But of course, there’s the convenient fact that she LOOKS feminine (because no matter what, a woman needs to look like a woman, dammit!)- like a beauty queen and a MOM. Don’t forget that. I don’t know where I’m going with this, and can’t begin to understand the GOP brain, so maybe I should just give up and use my energy to focus on the candidate who is not running on military strength and God.
Last night on Charlie Rose, Doris Kearns Goodwin talked a little bit about what I think you’re addressing in your post (and added comment). She talked about how no one is really ready to be president, that there’s no criteria that can be put on a list, but that a person’s life shows a lot about how he or she would handle the position. Then she went into some of what you have written- that the “private” politics is where we might be headed, and that it’s not such a bad idea. I think the trouble is, no one knows where to start and where to end (such as not wanting to bring a 17 yr old into the spotlight, but wanting to talk about women’s issues- abortion/birth control, abstinence only teaching, family values, etc…). So complicated, but so compelling.
Posted by: Liz · Sep 2, 07:51 PM · #
Ohh…. I should go watch that interview at some point.
The nuances of this whole thing just got SO subtle. Because there is this giant shadow of political life that just got slammed into the spotlight. I’m having a hard time managing all the outrage and disbelief I’ve experienced the past two days… just a big sense of Stop it you jerks, you’re doing it wrong.
Or maybe I’m just totally fascinated by the nuances and generating arguments out of them :)
The point about the daughter—and her being “public” fair game— is excellent. That challenges the idea that the dissolution of the public/private boundary is all good. Is childhood (itself a recent invention, in a sense) a pre-public phase, something to be sheltered within families? Yeah, probably.
Almost every strong argument you can make about this stuff undoes itself. There’s no single feminist theory—or social theory—that can really manage it.
Which is basically awesome.
But yeah, also sad. Underneath it all, I feel like the parallel psychodrama here is using “gender” to front for racism. Members of her clan self-describe as rednecks. She’s so white it stings. Haters who would have stayed home can get behind that. God. Cultural conservatism on both tracks: she’s got it.
And we can’t really even say it because we’ve got to condescend to taking her seriously. For some halfway-decent reasons. Round and round…
Posted by: (0v0) · Sep 2, 08:07 PM · #
...and round. Yeah.
::sigh::
Posted by: joy · Sep 2, 10:58 PM · #
I guess this is what happens when old dualities — or cognitive structures in general— break down.
Now that I think of it, my Francophone friend, it’s the French who really know how to unwind these things. Derrida and Bourdieu both did it to Levi-Strauss (the births of post- structuralism). Cixous does it to herself!!!
There’s probably some brilliant, subtle, basically impossible French feminist literature on the antinomies generated by the public-private dualism, and how we can break them down.
Posted by: (0v0) · Sep 3, 08:13 AM · #
Ok, so Bourdieu is popping up everywhere lately. You’re not the only one who’s told me that I should check him out. Alors, dis-moi. Where do I start?
Posted by: joy · Sep 5, 02:58 AM · #
Definitely with An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology by Bourdieu and Wacquant. There are a couple of wonderful overview articles behind ivory firewalls if you’d like me to send them after that, too. Homo Academicus and Pascalian Meditations are two of my favorite books ever; Distinction, when I read it, changed my life.
Posted by: (0v0) · Sep 6, 06:49 AM · #
Thank you, Owl!
Posted by: joy · Sep 6, 09:48 AM · #