Spivak's speech 'On Revolution' can be found here. My comments are in bold.
I begin with the Rohingyas being plowed down mercilessly in Burma.
Begin what? Discoursing 'on Revolution'? Why? Would a Revolution in Myanmar end this 'merciless plowing down?' Nope. The Burmese Communists were more not less genocidal than the Army. So why begin a talk 'on Revolution' by mentioning suffering people who will be worse off if a Revolution occurs?
We are of course asking in the short range for a safe zone protected by UN peacekeeping forces. Why? Such forces are known to be useless.
But the real requirement is a revolution in consciousness, required by UN peacekeepers whose alleged record for rape is scary, and, of course, by all ethnic cleansers – extreme identitarians – around the world.
Oh! So you're saying 'we need a Revolution in the hearts of bad people so they stop doing naughty things.'
And, given the upsurge of right-wing sentiment among the student body, I think we need to recognize that the university also requires a revolution in consciousness even as it undertakes to save the world. It's not just bad people who must immediately have a revolution inside their consciousness but also students need to have a revolution in their consciousness otherwise they might think I'm silly and have nothing to say. We have forgotten that a university is a mind-changing machine rather than merely an instrument of upward class mobility leading to entrepreneurial success. So Gayatri forgot, when she borrowed money to go to Uni in America, that she was supposed to have her mind changed for her rather than merely rise up through meretricious careerism and the entrepreneurial success of her speculations in Derrida futures.
Begin what? Discoursing 'on Revolution'? Why? Would a Revolution in Myanmar end this 'merciless plowing down?' Nope. The Burmese Communists were more not less genocidal than the Army. So why begin a talk 'on Revolution' by mentioning suffering people who will be worse off if a Revolution occurs?
We are of course asking in the short range for a safe zone protected by UN peacekeeping forces. Why? Such forces are known to be useless.
But the real requirement is a revolution in consciousness, required by UN peacekeepers whose alleged record for rape is scary, and, of course, by all ethnic cleansers – extreme identitarians – around the world.
Oh! So you're saying 'we need a Revolution in the hearts of bad people so they stop doing naughty things.'
And, given the upsurge of right-wing sentiment among the student body, I think we need to recognize that the university also requires a revolution in consciousness even as it undertakes to save the world. It's not just bad people who must immediately have a revolution inside their consciousness but also students need to have a revolution in their consciousness otherwise they might think I'm silly and have nothing to say. We have forgotten that a university is a mind-changing machine rather than merely an instrument of upward class mobility leading to entrepreneurial success. So Gayatri forgot, when she borrowed money to go to Uni in America, that she was supposed to have her mind changed for her rather than merely rise up through meretricious careerism and the entrepreneurial success of her speculations in Derrida futures.
Why does Gayatri think anybody would want to subject themselves to a 'mind-changing machine'? The answer is she has a bizarre belief concerning 'Revolutions'.
I believe a revolution – indicating a systemic change — can only be lasting if there is a constant attempt to create a will for social justice; Why hold this belief? It is foolish. If, 'A will for social justice' can effectuate social justice, it would exist if people wanted it. If not, the 'constant attempt to create it' is either otiose or bound to have zero impact. a constant attempt to produce the subaltern intellectual required to counteract the incessant subalternization required by the self-determination of capital within globalized capitalism.
WTF? Who is 'constantly attempting to produce the subaltern intellectual'? Nobody. We know that subaltern intellectuals are shite. Spivak is an example. Who is 'constantly attempting' to produce more worthless blathershites like her? Not even Spivak.
Why? Well, obviously, the subaltern intellectual can't counteract 'the incessant subalternization required by the self-determination of capital' anymore than being born can counteract the birth process. Spivak may think that the 'self determination' of Indian Capital within Globalised Capitalism has rendered it subaltern. This isn't true. Indian Capital migrates across borders- because that is what Globalised Capitalism means. Its 'self determination' could be to become metropolitan with equal likelihood to being confined to B.P.O type stuff lower down the supply chain.
There is nothing stopping an Indian capitalist becoming an American capitalist just as there is nothing stopping an Indian Professor becoming an American Professor. Indeed, sexual harassment might be less penalized there than back home.
Anyway, it turns out, Spivak herself doesn't understand what point, if any, mention of the subaltern, could possibly make.
And I am stumped by the subaltern, even as I am altogether unconvinced by top-down philanthropy or class-continuous reverse racism; I am also stumped, in another way, by gender.
Well, no big surprise- it was always clear that Spivak wasn't really engaging with gender or development but merely talking self regarding, meretricious, mendacious tripe.
I do not have the time to engage myself with the final problem of how to think revolution if one agrees with M. N. Roy-Bukharin-Mao, that the dictatorship of the proletariat is for the Western world and the agricultural sector is for the rest;
This is rubbish. Bukharin and Roy and Mao advocated fucking over the peasants. Mao succeeded. Bukharin was killed by Stalin but rehabilitated by Gorby who, quite foolishly, under the spell of mathematical economists like Abel Aganbegyan, destroyed Communism by disintermediating the Party from control of the Soviet Economy. Roy ran away to a nice jail cell in British India and then became some sort of Integral Humanist like Deendayal Upadhyaya.
if one considers Marx’s letter to Zasulich,
Why consider it? Lenin settled its hash long ago. The fact is it was Mensheviks who, during the Kerensky interregnum, laid the foundations for GOSPLAN. But the thing was blindingly obvious. There was a 'scissors crisis' at the start and the end of the Leninist project. But, there was never any suggestion that Marx or Bukharin or Roy differed from Lenin in thinking that ultimately Land was a factor of production similar to Capital. Marx thought the 'Mir' might play a positive role in the short run but he was no Narodnik. Roy, too, wasn't enraptured by some 'do bigha zamin' peasant utopia. Rather, his humanism was tactical merely. So was that of the Left Front as Spivak knows very well. That's why it came crashing down post-Singur.
if one attends to Teodor Shanin, The Late Marx and the Russian Road.
Why attend to Shanin? His family wasn't of peasant origin. He only took up the subject under protest in Britain. But his famous insight re. Vietnam was worthless. Irma Adelman, by contrast, pointed out the obvious- viz. Vietnamese peasants would have to pay back rent if the landlords came back and that's why they sheltered the Vietcong. Shanin is a brave guy but he's spent his life barking up the wrong trees.
I am not quoting the actual Roy-Bukharin slogan, but many of you would be able to reproduce it.
There was no 'Roy-Bukharin slogan'. Roy wasn't important. Bukharin was but he failed to predict that there would be another scissors crisis. It's all very well telling peasants to 'enrich themselves' but they still won't transfer surpluses gratis to the urban proletariat. Bukharin fell because he was stupid. So did Gorbachev.
As I say, I have material in the agricultural sector that would require going back to square one and not just talk Marxism and ecology. Maybe another time.
Rubbish. Spivak has no 'material in the agricultural sector'. She is an ignorant fool. She has been saying she doesn't have time to explain why she has something to say for as long as she has been pretending she doesn't have nothing to say and doesn't know shite about History or Economics or Politics or even Bengali literature.
I notice that, although the title of this 13/13 was changed from “revolution” to “uprising,” we are still generally thinking “revolution.” I will move with that tenaciousness of the first word. The texts of Marx and Engels distinguished between Umwälzung (=upheaval, curiously enough cognate with Aufhebung=sublation) and Revolution, following the German classical philosophical habit of using the Latin word for something more systemic.
Nonsense! Marx and Engels were perfectly aware of the full English title of the Anti Duhring. It was not the Latin word, but its French usage which was important. But Aufhebung could be translated just as well, as Derrida pointed out, as 'révéler'. Indeed, Spivak isn't really calling for any sort of social upheaval. Just a quiet 'revolution' inside the hearts of U.N peace-keepers and nasty people and also students who don't understand that University is a machine for, if not cranial surgery, then some crude form of 'mind-changing'.
I have no definition of revolution but we may want to keep the difference between uprising (tamer than upheaval) and revolution in mind.
This is sheer dishonesty. Spivak knows that an uprising- like the Arab Spring- is not tamer than an upheaval- like that concerned with #me too which is shaking things up in Hollywood and Ivy League and so on- on the contrary, it is a lethal business.
This is sheer dishonesty. Spivak knows that an uprising- like the Arab Spring- is not tamer than an upheaval- like that concerned with #me too which is shaking things up in Hollywood and Ivy League and so on- on the contrary, it is a lethal business.
I was initially asked to speak on Gandhi. I am not an Indianist, only an Indian. Of course as such I have an opinion of Gandhi, but for the occasion, the better analysis of how he fitted into a global consideration of revolution would have been offered by a historian or political theorist of modern India, whatever color. As it happen, Columbia is fortunate to have Akeel Bilgrami, who is both Indian and a specialist on Gandhi, although I am not absolutely sure that he would comment on Gandhi’s lugubrious gender politics.
Okay, Spivak can't talk about Gandhi because she isn't an 'Indianist'. But neither is Bilgrami. His training is in Western academic philosophy of a particularly narrow sort. And if he won't comment on 'Gandhi's lugubrious gender politics' why should we listen to him at all? Spivak doesn't tell us.
Okay, Spivak can't talk about Gandhi because she isn't an 'Indianist'. But neither is Bilgrami. His training is in Western academic philosophy of a particularly narrow sort. And if he won't comment on 'Gandhi's lugubrious gender politics' why should we listen to him at all? Spivak doesn't tell us.
I mention this because identity politics lays waste the democratic possibility of achieving flexibility of the imagination toward others. And I began with an example of how violent extreme identitarianism can become.
Why mention your inability to talk about a founding father of your country's democracy if your point is that 'identity politics' is what makes such 'flexibility of the imagination' impossible? Spivak has an identity as a 'Europeanist' not an 'Indianist'. Thus, she says she can't talk about Gandhi. Clearly her identity has constrained her capacity for political discourse. Equally clearly, it does not constrain Bilgrami. Why? The answer is he's not an 'Americanist' or a 'Europeanist'. He's just a Philosopher. So his identity doesn't constrain him with respect to speaking of Gandhi. On the other hand, perhaps, his gender does constrain him. Wow! It appears that identitarianism is only really a problem in the Academy where an Indian can't speak about India because she is a 'Europeanist'.
Why mention your inability to talk about a founding father of your country's democracy if your point is that 'identity politics' is what makes such 'flexibility of the imagination' impossible? Spivak has an identity as a 'Europeanist' not an 'Indianist'. Thus, she says she can't talk about Gandhi. Clearly her identity has constrained her capacity for political discourse. Equally clearly, it does not constrain Bilgrami. Why? The answer is he's not an 'Americanist' or a 'Europeanist'. He's just a Philosopher. So his identity doesn't constrain him with respect to speaking of Gandhi. On the other hand, perhaps, his gender does constrain him. Wow! It appears that identitarianism is only really a problem in the Academy where an Indian can't speak about India because she is a 'Europeanist'.
This is of course a double bind. No it isn't. It's stupidity, nothing more. As I have pointed out in my recent response to Daniel Dennett for Philosophie magazine: “he is unable to appreciate the fact that he speaks from the privileged class, the privileged gender and the privileged race, so he imagines that his concerns are those of the world. His own position in the world dictates what he perceives as truth.”
How utterly fucked up and shitty must Spivak's place in the world be if she feels she herself can't about Gandhi whereas Bilgrami, Davidson's student, can talk about him?
Yet we must not let supremacists transform us into identitarians.
Spivak, you are an identitarian of an abject sort. You say your identity as a 'Europeanist', not an 'Indianist', disqualifies you from talking about Gandhi. No 'Supremacist' forced you into so abject a position. You did it to yourself.
Gauri Lankesh, assassinated on September 5, 2017, invoked “universality” as the goal of people marked by caste oppression.
Nonsense! Gauri Lankesh wanted caste based reservations and other entitlements- not universal needs-based cash transfers.
This way of understanding “we,” claiming the subject of Marxism through the affirmative sabotage of “universalism” – not simply proposing fantasmatic counter-universals with the global South as center – may be a way out of claims to identity in intellectual work.
This is not a way of understanding 'we'. Either we all 'give according to our ability and receive according to our need' or else we just get factionalist rent contestation and worthless self-publicists posing as the champion of some surd and silent subaltern.
Affirmative sabotage of universalism may sound good if you are told that your particular identity class will gain at the expense of some other class. Unfortunately, bitter experience has shown that this is a honey-trap. You may get into a better college thanks to your identity class but face fiercer competition in useful subjects and so end up with a worthless degree. Okay, you may be able to parley your social network into a rent-seeking niche but, meanwhile, the kids who went to second rate schools but learned useful things are powering ahead of you. Ultimately sabotage is just a type of stupid wrecking of machinery which served a useful purpose.
Du Bois recommends a synthesis between race loyalty and opposition to segregation. We recommend negotiating the double bind every moment of each day. Du Bois spoke sensibly. Spivak is making a foolish recommendation. Double binds and 'logic-bombs' are things to be avoided. They paralyze. They don't empower. Don't think about worthless shite for even a moment of the day. If you find you are thinking about something every moment of each day you are suffering from psychosis. Get help. Do it now.
How utterly fucked up and shitty must Spivak's place in the world be if she feels she herself can't about Gandhi whereas Bilgrami, Davidson's student, can talk about him?
Yet we must not let supremacists transform us into identitarians.
Spivak, you are an identitarian of an abject sort. You say your identity as a 'Europeanist', not an 'Indianist', disqualifies you from talking about Gandhi. No 'Supremacist' forced you into so abject a position. You did it to yourself.
Gauri Lankesh, assassinated on September 5, 2017, invoked “universality” as the goal of people marked by caste oppression.
Nonsense! Gauri Lankesh wanted caste based reservations and other entitlements- not universal needs-based cash transfers.
This way of understanding “we,” claiming the subject of Marxism through the affirmative sabotage of “universalism” – not simply proposing fantasmatic counter-universals with the global South as center – may be a way out of claims to identity in intellectual work.
This is not a way of understanding 'we'. Either we all 'give according to our ability and receive according to our need' or else we just get factionalist rent contestation and worthless self-publicists posing as the champion of some surd and silent subaltern.
Affirmative sabotage of universalism may sound good if you are told that your particular identity class will gain at the expense of some other class. Unfortunately, bitter experience has shown that this is a honey-trap. You may get into a better college thanks to your identity class but face fiercer competition in useful subjects and so end up with a worthless degree. Okay, you may be able to parley your social network into a rent-seeking niche but, meanwhile, the kids who went to second rate schools but learned useful things are powering ahead of you. Ultimately sabotage is just a type of stupid wrecking of machinery which served a useful purpose.
Du Bois recommends a synthesis between race loyalty and opposition to segregation. We recommend negotiating the double bind every moment of each day. Du Bois spoke sensibly. Spivak is making a foolish recommendation. Double binds and 'logic-bombs' are things to be avoided. They paralyze. They don't empower. Don't think about worthless shite for even a moment of the day. If you find you are thinking about something every moment of each day you are suffering from psychosis. Get help. Do it now.
I support Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar rather than Gandhi in the matter of the Indian Constitution and will touch on the fact that he interpreted caste in his esrly days as the difference between the treatment of surplus women and surplus men (as opposed to Gandhi’s poor gender politics) and that he thought learning without ethical reflex is dangerous.
Oh dear! Spivak said she wouldn't talk about Gandhi because she wasn't qualified to do so but, a few minutes later, she is perfectly happy to reveal herself to be a bare faced liar.
What Spivak is saying here is sheer nonsense. Ambedkar never pretended that he got his way with the Constitution describing his labors in that respect as 'hack work' but then neither did Gandhi. Nobody ever 'interpreted caste' as 'the difference between the treatment of surplus women and surplus men'. Which Indian leader ever said 'learn but don't bother about ethics'? None. What on earth is this idiot blathering about?
Let us also keep in mind that Ambedkar devoted all his energies to securing constitutional subjectship for all rather than engaging in identity politics as an outcaste.
Utterly absurd. Ambedkar fought very hard for reservations for his caste fellows. On several occasions he demanded that the Forward Caste Hindu majority receive a minority of votes in Legislative and other Assemblies. Ambedkar wasn't very successful as a politician but his 'maximalism' in this respect is what makes him a towering figure.
And, I am embarrassed to report that, the first time around, I had not noticed that caste was nowhere mentioned in Guha’s introductory essay to the first volume of Subaltern Studies, published in 1982.
Guha is a Kayastha and talks up Kayasthas and denigrates Brahmins. Of course there is caste in Subaltern Studies. But it is factionalist in nature and dissembles its careerism by pretending to be Leftist.
Achyut Chetan’s dissertation will provide information on the contribution of women to the making of the Indian constitution.
No it won't. The guy isn't a lawyer. America isn't important, Da Valera's Ireland is. A guy who teaches Eng Lit is bound to fuck up in a technical field like this. As for the contribution of women- you'd have to have a good reading knowledge of a dozen Indian languages to do justice to the theme.
Oh dear! Spivak said she wouldn't talk about Gandhi because she wasn't qualified to do so but, a few minutes later, she is perfectly happy to reveal herself to be a bare faced liar.
What Spivak is saying here is sheer nonsense. Ambedkar never pretended that he got his way with the Constitution describing his labors in that respect as 'hack work' but then neither did Gandhi. Nobody ever 'interpreted caste' as 'the difference between the treatment of surplus women and surplus men'. Which Indian leader ever said 'learn but don't bother about ethics'? None. What on earth is this idiot blathering about?
Let us also keep in mind that Ambedkar devoted all his energies to securing constitutional subjectship for all rather than engaging in identity politics as an outcaste.
Utterly absurd. Ambedkar fought very hard for reservations for his caste fellows. On several occasions he demanded that the Forward Caste Hindu majority receive a minority of votes in Legislative and other Assemblies. Ambedkar wasn't very successful as a politician but his 'maximalism' in this respect is what makes him a towering figure.
And, I am embarrassed to report that, the first time around, I had not noticed that caste was nowhere mentioned in Guha’s introductory essay to the first volume of Subaltern Studies, published in 1982.
Guha is a Kayastha and talks up Kayasthas and denigrates Brahmins. Of course there is caste in Subaltern Studies. But it is factionalist in nature and dissembles its careerism by pretending to be Leftist.
Achyut Chetan’s dissertation will provide information on the contribution of women to the making of the Indian constitution.
No it won't. The guy isn't a lawyer. America isn't important, Da Valera's Ireland is. A guy who teaches Eng Lit is bound to fuck up in a technical field like this. As for the contribution of women- you'd have to have a good reading knowledge of a dozen Indian languages to do justice to the theme.
As regards this Gandhi/Ambedkar intervention, let me point out that national liberation, in spite of many uprisings, is not a revolution.
That's why America is still ruled by the Queen. There was no American Revolution.
That's why America is still ruled by the Queen. There was no American Revolution.
National liberation is not a revolution – formally, a systemic change? – because it is generally brought about by the progressive bourgeoisie (Lenin’s too well-known phrase) on an orientalist model of the nation being liberated and the national population are neither epistemologically nor politicaly continuous with it.
Sheer stupidity! Spivak thinks only a particular kind of Communist Revolution counts as a Revolution. Why? Genuine Communists hold no such belief. They refer to the French Revolution and the Algerian Revolution and so on.
Also, there is often another problem for a revolution to occur. As Marx and Engels learnt from their experience of 1871: the beneficiaries of liberation cannot simply occupy the ready made state-machine, and set it in motion for its own purposes.”
What experience did Marx and Engels have in 1871? Where in the world where there any 'beneficiaries of liberation'? Is Spivak speaking of the Paris Commune? Is she utterly mad? Does she think the Prussian army was an agent of liberation?
Spivak says she's an 'Europeanist'. What sort of Europeanist believes that there were any 'beneficiaries of liberation' in 1871 for whom 'a ready made state-machine' was conveniently vacant and ready to be re-purposed.
Sheer stupidity! Spivak thinks only a particular kind of Communist Revolution counts as a Revolution. Why? Genuine Communists hold no such belief. They refer to the French Revolution and the Algerian Revolution and so on.
Also, there is often another problem for a revolution to occur. As Marx and Engels learnt from their experience of 1871: the beneficiaries of liberation cannot simply occupy the ready made state-machine, and set it in motion for its own purposes.”
What experience did Marx and Engels have in 1871? Where in the world where there any 'beneficiaries of liberation'? Is Spivak speaking of the Paris Commune? Is she utterly mad? Does she think the Prussian army was an agent of liberation?
Spivak says she's an 'Europeanist'. What sort of Europeanist believes that there were any 'beneficiaries of liberation' in 1871 for whom 'a ready made state-machine' was conveniently vacant and ready to be re-purposed.
In that very document, the 1872 edition of the Communist Manifesto, where they made this comment, Marx and Engels also remarked that the progress of big business in the last 25 years have made the sections on revolution in the Manifesto outdated.
Yes. They weren't stupid. What they did not say is what you, Spivak, say- viz. that the Parisians were 'beneficiaries of liberation'. On the contrary, they were the victims of Prussian aggression.
In other words, revolutionary strategy is connected to the regulation of capital, whatever revolution might be.
Nope. Only the military side of things matters.
On one side, epistemological engagement of the entire population for systemic change. On the other, regulation of capital.
Spivak says the entire population wanted systemic change. But Capital too is regulated by members of the population. French capitalists bought French bonds and paid off the Prussians to end the occupation. If this 'epistemological engagement of the entire population' had indeed obtained, nothing was stopping those same Capitalists from becoming People's Commissars managing their factories and railways and plantations for the purposes suggested by that univocal 'epistemological engagement'.
Both of these requirements for systemic change are absent in the general culture of a network society where economic growth is implicitly development.
It is not necessary to believe the same thing for systemic change to occur. Indeed, it is an impossible condition to fulfill. Economic growth is explicitly defined as Development. There is nothing 'implicit' about it.
I can hear the young voice at the diasporic convention in Ghana as I am hiding in the confines of the decrepit Du Bois library: “We are no longer seeking freedom. We are seeking economic growth.”
Why is Spivak hiding? Perhaps, if she did not have her head in the sand she would realize that Ghana became free long ago. Young voices are saying 'stop pretending we're still ruled by Whitey so everything is their fault. Shut the fuck up about Liberation. We want jobs. That means Economic Growth you worthless shitheads.'
Over against this the wisdom of our colleague, the co-author of the Global Competitiveness Index, speaking to me about the non-connection between economic growth and social inclusion. “I can tell you about economic growth,” said Xavier Sala I Martin, “but you,” pointing at me now, “are in charge of social inclusion.”
So, a Columbia Professor is polite to another Columbia Professor. Neither has any power or influence. Still, they are entrepreneurs in a globalised market for shite books and sound-bites.
Still, say what you like, putting Spivak in charge of 'social inclusion' is hilarious. She would start by excluding herself because of her claim to be a Europeanist and end up excluding everyone else because they have less crazy views about Europe than she does and thus are probably Europeanists too.
Yes. They weren't stupid. What they did not say is what you, Spivak, say- viz. that the Parisians were 'beneficiaries of liberation'. On the contrary, they were the victims of Prussian aggression.
In other words, revolutionary strategy is connected to the regulation of capital, whatever revolution might be.
Nope. Only the military side of things matters.
On one side, epistemological engagement of the entire population for systemic change. On the other, regulation of capital.
Spivak says the entire population wanted systemic change. But Capital too is regulated by members of the population. French capitalists bought French bonds and paid off the Prussians to end the occupation. If this 'epistemological engagement of the entire population' had indeed obtained, nothing was stopping those same Capitalists from becoming People's Commissars managing their factories and railways and plantations for the purposes suggested by that univocal 'epistemological engagement'.
Both of these requirements for systemic change are absent in the general culture of a network society where economic growth is implicitly development.
It is not necessary to believe the same thing for systemic change to occur. Indeed, it is an impossible condition to fulfill. Economic growth is explicitly defined as Development. There is nothing 'implicit' about it.
I can hear the young voice at the diasporic convention in Ghana as I am hiding in the confines of the decrepit Du Bois library: “We are no longer seeking freedom. We are seeking economic growth.”
Why is Spivak hiding? Perhaps, if she did not have her head in the sand she would realize that Ghana became free long ago. Young voices are saying 'stop pretending we're still ruled by Whitey so everything is their fault. Shut the fuck up about Liberation. We want jobs. That means Economic Growth you worthless shitheads.'
Over against this the wisdom of our colleague, the co-author of the Global Competitiveness Index, speaking to me about the non-connection between economic growth and social inclusion. “I can tell you about economic growth,” said Xavier Sala I Martin, “but you,” pointing at me now, “are in charge of social inclusion.”
So, a Columbia Professor is polite to another Columbia Professor. Neither has any power or influence. Still, they are entrepreneurs in a globalised market for shite books and sound-bites.
Still, say what you like, putting Spivak in charge of 'social inclusion' is hilarious. She would start by excluding herself because of her claim to be a Europeanist and end up excluding everyone else because they have less crazy views about Europe than she does and thus are probably Europeanists too.
As I have mentioned above, the general answer to social inclusion in our context is top-down philanthropy or class-continuous reverse-racism. Why doesn’t it work? Because the impatience of development, inserting the poor into the circuit of capital, does not come with the painstaking care to the re-arrangement of desires that might be able to generate capital for social use.
Wow! Poor people who get jobs and a bit of money are so fucking subaltern that they don't know they ought to be buying Spivak's worthless books rather than food and clothes and smartphones.
Spivak is giving a new version of the Sen-Dobb thesis which was that the working class needs to take a cut in standard of living so that investment in Capital goods, and thus Development, can occur. Amartya Sen didn't notice that Indian workers needed to have a higher standard of living in order to raise productivity.
Similarly, Spivak -who thinks the poor must first be brainwashed (or subjected to a 'mind-changing' machine) before they can be allowed to spend their first pay-packet- hasn't noticed that the people paid to teach worthless drivel like hers, themselves spend money on food, and clothes and smartphones while going through the motions.
And this work does not necessarily imply regulation of capital.
Of course not! Why should it? It is based on machines for mind-changing. All we need to do is subject everyone to such a machine and there won't be any need for any regulation of anything at all.
Moreover, not much follow-up care is taken to ensure that the general politico-economic culture of the nation-state within which this global philanthropy is at work will tolerate the development of the deserving poor.
No follow-up care can be taken to do something which is not just stupid but physically impossible. Take the case of Malawi. Its poor are deserving. Did the politico-economic culture of Malawi lack tolerance for their development? Nope. It was just that a bunch of corrupt goons shot a whistle blower and that disrupted the AID gravy train.
In other words and simply, if national liberation is not revolution, global development is no harbinger of revolution, used in the loose sense of systemic change, either.
Nothing is the harbinger of revolution- according to you, dear Spivak- except some fucking 'mind changing' machine which will make everybody have exactly the same 'epistemological engagement'.
Wow! Poor people who get jobs and a bit of money are so fucking subaltern that they don't know they ought to be buying Spivak's worthless books rather than food and clothes and smartphones.
Spivak is giving a new version of the Sen-Dobb thesis which was that the working class needs to take a cut in standard of living so that investment in Capital goods, and thus Development, can occur. Amartya Sen didn't notice that Indian workers needed to have a higher standard of living in order to raise productivity.
Similarly, Spivak -who thinks the poor must first be brainwashed (or subjected to a 'mind-changing' machine) before they can be allowed to spend their first pay-packet- hasn't noticed that the people paid to teach worthless drivel like hers, themselves spend money on food, and clothes and smartphones while going through the motions.
And this work does not necessarily imply regulation of capital.
Of course not! Why should it? It is based on machines for mind-changing. All we need to do is subject everyone to such a machine and there won't be any need for any regulation of anything at all.
Moreover, not much follow-up care is taken to ensure that the general politico-economic culture of the nation-state within which this global philanthropy is at work will tolerate the development of the deserving poor.
No follow-up care can be taken to do something which is not just stupid but physically impossible. Take the case of Malawi. Its poor are deserving. Did the politico-economic culture of Malawi lack tolerance for their development? Nope. It was just that a bunch of corrupt goons shot a whistle blower and that disrupted the AID gravy train.
In other words and simply, if national liberation is not revolution, global development is no harbinger of revolution, used in the loose sense of systemic change, either.
Nothing is the harbinger of revolution- according to you, dear Spivak- except some fucking 'mind changing' machine which will make everybody have exactly the same 'epistemological engagement'.
On the eve of the 70th anniversary of Indian independence, I had a public conversation in Calcutta with an eminent historian. I was startled by her confidence in the passing of good laws; as much as I am by my colleague, ally and friend Joseph Stiglitz’s insistence that, if the developing countries do not take good advice, the advice should be enforced in the juridico-legal. There can be no doubt of the absolute goodwill of these colleagues. Yet we must insist, if we are thinking of revolution, that law is not enforcement.
Successful Revolutions enforce laws they have themselves made. If they fail to do so and it is is the old laws that are enforced then no Revolution has occurred. The American Revolution meant that some slaves whom the British had set free reverted to servile status. Some gentlemen were proscribed and lost their estates. Such laws as carried over from one regime to the others were considered autochthonous.
Law is also not a matter of developing a will to social justice.
Quite true. However laws promulgated after a successful Revolution do consider themselves to originate from a will to social justice of a particular sort. This may mean that some slaves who were freed, or minorities who were prospering, experience a reversal of fortune.
The law is separated from yet related to justice by what Derrida has called a relationship without relationship.
The law says that Derrida's comments have no legal force or authority. It is a separate, protocol bound, discourse.
One might say that the letter of the law is to be rigorously embraced as a grounding error, not to be confused with the fuzzy concept of the spirit of the law.
One might only say that if one was as stupid as shit. Don't embrace the letter of the law- akrebeia is a torment not conducive to the proper management of affairs. Why would anyone confuse 'a grounding error' which, outside the Electrician's specialist field, is just meaningless babble, with anything at all?
A society where this can be maintained is close to a post-revolutionary society.
Nonsense. Imagine a society composed of devotees of Derrida who obey Spivak's injunction. Would this society be 'close to a post-revolutionary society'? Nope. It would just be a collection of people united by a bizarre shibboleth of a meaningless sort.
It's like saying 'If all the Brits and booted Hessians in America just said they were American patriots and that King George III was a Red Indian, then America would have come close to becoming what it did after the Revolution'.
The thing is nonsense.
Successful Revolutions enforce laws they have themselves made. If they fail to do so and it is is the old laws that are enforced then no Revolution has occurred. The American Revolution meant that some slaves whom the British had set free reverted to servile status. Some gentlemen were proscribed and lost their estates. Such laws as carried over from one regime to the others were considered autochthonous.
Law is also not a matter of developing a will to social justice.
Quite true. However laws promulgated after a successful Revolution do consider themselves to originate from a will to social justice of a particular sort. This may mean that some slaves who were freed, or minorities who were prospering, experience a reversal of fortune.
The law is separated from yet related to justice by what Derrida has called a relationship without relationship.
The law says that Derrida's comments have no legal force or authority. It is a separate, protocol bound, discourse.
One might say that the letter of the law is to be rigorously embraced as a grounding error, not to be confused with the fuzzy concept of the spirit of the law.
One might only say that if one was as stupid as shit. Don't embrace the letter of the law- akrebeia is a torment not conducive to the proper management of affairs. Why would anyone confuse 'a grounding error' which, outside the Electrician's specialist field, is just meaningless babble, with anything at all?
A society where this can be maintained is close to a post-revolutionary society.
Nonsense. Imagine a society composed of devotees of Derrida who obey Spivak's injunction. Would this society be 'close to a post-revolutionary society'? Nope. It would just be a collection of people united by a bizarre shibboleth of a meaningless sort.
It's like saying 'If all the Brits and booted Hessians in America just said they were American patriots and that King George III was a Red Indian, then America would have come close to becoming what it did after the Revolution'.
The thing is nonsense.
Close, for the revolution is never over, can never claim a “post,” as colonialism abundantly can.
In which case, Spivak's claim is meaningless.
When an Ambedkar pushes for the establishment of a general constitutional subject, it can be shown that this is roughly his goal; a society where law is “easy,” as we used to say in the sixties.
Ambedkar wasn't pushing, he was co-opted and dismissed his contribution to the Constitution as 'hack-work'.
People were stupid and ignorant in the Sixties. They said stupid things- at least in Spivak's vicinity because she was stupid and ignorant and was studying a worthless subject.
This is why law is to be defined, of course by the possibility of perjury, but also by its iterability.
Nothing can be defined by either the possibility of perjury or by iterability. Error-correction and Recursivity matter the Law is not wholly defined in those terms.
The idea that law is defined by interpretability is too humanistic.
Nope. It is ignorant nonsense.
The revolutionary must now reckon with the post-human.
Why? Is the post-human going to lock him and torture him to he gives up the names of his network?
Anyone with leisure enough to reckon with the post-human isn't a revolutionary but rather a swindler of some obviously foolish stripe.
The post-human can nestle in the Marxian Realm of Freedom, where no social engineering is possible, in an extra-moral sense. But so can unicorns with rainbows coming out of their butts. Like gender in another way, it brings in the incalculable. The incalculable is already at the heart of Economics in the Problem of Value and the impossibility of a non Dictatorial Social Welfare Function.
In which case, Spivak's claim is meaningless.
When an Ambedkar pushes for the establishment of a general constitutional subject, it can be shown that this is roughly his goal; a society where law is “easy,” as we used to say in the sixties.
Ambedkar wasn't pushing, he was co-opted and dismissed his contribution to the Constitution as 'hack-work'.
People were stupid and ignorant in the Sixties. They said stupid things- at least in Spivak's vicinity because she was stupid and ignorant and was studying a worthless subject.
This is why law is to be defined, of course by the possibility of perjury, but also by its iterability.
Nothing can be defined by either the possibility of perjury or by iterability. Error-correction and Recursivity matter the Law is not wholly defined in those terms.
The idea that law is defined by interpretability is too humanistic.
Nope. It is ignorant nonsense.
The revolutionary must now reckon with the post-human.
Why? Is the post-human going to lock him and torture him to he gives up the names of his network?
Anyone with leisure enough to reckon with the post-human isn't a revolutionary but rather a swindler of some obviously foolish stripe.
The post-human can nestle in the Marxian Realm of Freedom, where no social engineering is possible, in an extra-moral sense. But so can unicorns with rainbows coming out of their butts. Like gender in another way, it brings in the incalculable. The incalculable is already at the heart of Economics in the Problem of Value and the impossibility of a non Dictatorial Social Welfare Function.
When asked to speak on Gandhi I proposed Du Bois as an alternative and Bernard and Jesus were altogether chagrined that room could not be made for him.
Spivak vomiting on Gandhi is one thing, her shitting on Du Bois is taking intellectual affirmative action too far because it is not clear that Bengalis suffered anything comparable to the epistemic violence meted out to African Americans.
I had hoped to bring out Du Bois’s rewriting of the general strike and relate it to Rosa Luxemburg revising Marx and Engels.
Du Bois actually helped his people. Rosa fucked up hers. Bengali leftists fucked up leftist Bengal. African American sociologists and economists aren't worthless shitheads. That's why few African Americans study worthless subjects at Uni. They prefer to serve their community and their country by achieving worthwhile things.
Spivak vomiting on Gandhi is one thing, her shitting on Du Bois is taking intellectual affirmative action too far because it is not clear that Bengalis suffered anything comparable to the epistemic violence meted out to African Americans.
I had hoped to bring out Du Bois’s rewriting of the general strike and relate it to Rosa Luxemburg revising Marx and Engels.
Du Bois actually helped his people. Rosa fucked up hers. Bengali leftists fucked up leftist Bengal. African American sociologists and economists aren't worthless shitheads. That's why few African Americans study worthless subjects at Uni. They prefer to serve their community and their country by achieving worthwhile things.
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