The Post-Left

[Video Game Fan 2000]

I've been meaning to ask this for a while: what is a race reductionist?

A liberal who thinks demographic differences and categories pre-exist economic class or material wealth and pre-determine a person's social status, and remains unchanged if their economic status or level of education changes. EG, people who argue that race is the exclusive indicator of police violence when its race plus class that is the strongest indicator of who has to suffer that. An example of a race reductionist view is the popular (and clearly false) american talking point that sex and class does not influence who gets pulled over by police, all black people are equally at risk for it regardless of gender or class.

Or more generally someone who thinks 'cultural' differences are directly reducible to a persons race, and are an unchanging constant or identity that persists as everything else is contingent.

No one calls themselves a race reductionist, but there is a whole industry for this nonsense.

On the right liberal side, the "trad" part of post-leftism is also race reductionist but from the opposing direction.

[AllisonSays]

Do you even know what you are talking about?

Race reductionists on the left are the ones reintroducing race into the popular discourse; those and the usual racists; it's the Marxists that are saying don't do it and to stop reinflating a made up persecutory pseudo-science from the 18th century.

This is a wee bit like the Tories saying that 'woke teens' are the real racists because they're talking about race, isn't it? It's a right wing sleight-of-hand. Saying that race is a salient factor in the lives of black and brown people - which it obviously is - is not the same thing as saying that race is 'real' in the pseudo-scientific sense and it's a shitty calumny to pretend they're equivalent claims.

[chveik]

and if you're not arsed to read the book, if think this article was the most relevant

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v37/n17/slavoj-zizek/the-non-existence-of-norway

(not particularly interested in discussing it further, it's old news, i just mentionned it in passing)

[chveik]

This is a wee bit like the Tories saying that 'woke teens' are the real racists because they're talking about race, isn't it? It's a right wing sleight-of-hand. Saying that race is a salient factor in the lives of black and brown people - which it obviously is - is not the same thing as saying that race is 'real' in the pseudo-scientific sense and it's a shitty calumny to pretend they're equivalent claims.

yep pretty much, i think being a marxist means that you have to find the universal in the singular and that (for instance) by fighting against discriminations/police brutality against a defined group of people you're also fighting for everyone's rights

[Video Game Fan 2000]

If that's the case though, what does "race" even mean anymore? It's undeniably real, but in one specific way its incontrovertibly not real, its salient to experience, but in a way thats obvious to observers (race experts in universities) even if experiencers themselves are unaware (working class black and brown people who don't like race-based terminology), etc. Its constructed by discourses and social activities, but any notion that social action might change or efface it is offensive?

Its a very strange concept to resurrect in this way, based around one specific group of legalistic ideas in contradiction to everything else. Its hardly consistent. Such a weird, toxic word to go Humpty Dumpty about.

you have to find the universal in the singular and that (for instance) by fighting against discriminations/police brutality against a defined group of people you're also fighting for everyone's rights

this is the crux tho, absolutely bang on, when it gets down to this semantics and nitpicking aren't relevant anymore.

[TrenterPercenter]

of course i do.
yep, i'm sure you could an epub of it on soulseek

Thank you; I've never really given much time to Zizek past his silliness and I never knew about this; not that I know what this is an ominous book called double blackmail; What is it about; what is the problem with it?

Do I really have to read this whole book? What are your problems with it (VKF2k same question to you) it is an actual anti-immigrant book?

[TrenterPercenter]

and if you're not arsed to read the book, if think this article was the most relevant

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v37/n17/slavoj-zizek/the-non-existence-of-norway

(not particularly interested in discussing it further, it's old news, i just mentionned it in passing)

Ah thanks that is more manageable

[TrenterPercenter]

This is a wee bit like the Tories saying that 'woke teens' are the real racists because they're talking about race, isn't it? It's a right wing sleight-of-hand. Saying that race is a salient factor in the lives of black and brown people - which it obviously is - is not the same thing as saying that race is 'real' in the pseudo-scientific sense and it's a shitty calumny to pretend they're equivalent claims.

Nope, I'd say you are the one performing the sleight of hand; a well heeled one around "colour blindness" and that not recognising race as a reality is the same as not fighting racism.

Racism is real; race isn't - I couldn't be more clear on that.

Racism is the salient factor in peoples lives not race; and reducing groups down to race as a solution is unsurprisingly reductionist and lends itself to promote racism itself.

[AllisonSays]

If that's the case though, what does "race" even mean anymore? It's undeniably real, but in one specific way its incontrovertibly not real, its salient to experience, but in a way thats obvious to observers (race experts in universities) even if experiencers themselves are unaware (working class black and brown people who don't like race-based terminology), etc. Its constructed by discourses and social activities, but any notion that social action might efface it is offensive?

Its a very strange concept to resurrection in this way. Its hardly consistent. Such a weird, toxic word to go Humpty Dumpty about.

I'm not sure that I know what you mean. It's real as a relation between people and as something with material consequences; the experiential element is I guess more complicated but I don't think particularly relevant in this instance. When one per cent of university professors in the UK are black in the UK, when young black men are 19 times more likely than young white men to be stopped by the police in London, when ethnic minorities have died disproportionately of Covid, it seems pointless to get het up about the endless pliability of race as a concept - which from its colonial inception was always, necessarily pliant. Obviously all three of the examples I've offered there are to do with both race and class, which is why I think it's useful to think about them together instead of thinking of class as a dominant category that makes other ones useless.

[chveik]

I think the focus on race in popular discourse is already having negative effects, both in the "fuel for the far right" sense and in the sense fracturing the left into antagonistic, anti-universal blocs.

One of the key things is that working class racial minorities loathe it - it drastically reduces the outreach of leftist parties to these people as they view it as homogenising, insulting, middle class, elitist, derogatory, etc. I could give very specific examples in French politics but I've been asked not to post too much about that. Words like "racialised", "bodies", etc. create a repellent image in the minds of most workers who aren't white and give the impression that they're just their to slot into somebody else's political projects.

i'm a bit in a double bind about this because on the one hand i can see how it can alienate working class minorities and i wouldn't particularly trust some of the people using these categories that way in leading a leftist movement but on the other hand the whole debate highlights how fucking racist french society still is, and it'd be weird to think people using those terms are directly at fault.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

I'm not sure that I know what you mean. It's real as a relation between people and as something with material consequences; the experiential element is I guess more complicated but I don't think particularly relevant in this instance. When one per cent of university professors in the UK are black in the UK, when young black men are 19 times more likely than young white men to be stopped by the police in London, when ethnic minorities have died disproportionately of Covid, it seems pointless to get het up about the endless pliability of race as a concept - which from its colonial inception was always, necessarily pliant. Obviously all three of the examples I've offered there are to do with both race and class,

"real as relation" is difficult for me here. I don't really want to get into here but I'm definitely of the older school of thought that things expressing things this way necessarily flattens out or covers over antagonisms and conflicts in favour of socially meaningful "relations" which are both real and unreal depending on the view we take. It also flattens the important distinction between social identity and political subjectivity, and reduces our ability to read agency/autonomy in the actions of minorities as individuals or smaller groups.

Sorry if this is a cop out, but I'm not sure if this is the right place to get into this. Not least because this is about the "post left" and all it entails.

which is why I think it's useful to think about them together instead of thinking of class as a dominant category that makes other ones useless.

Universalising (or making generic) class isn't the same as making it dominant. I hate this idea that because something is applicable across groups it means it is dominant or some such. Class is the category of how things relate, how relations work, how things are structured - rather than a specific position in a relation or a specific place in a structure itself. Understanding it this way, and how it is part of all other other social or political groups isn't to make it "dominant" over the others, its to understand how political subjectivity emerges, and what kind of things it can achieve.

In the age of climate change and the rise of the far right, the dogmatic equation of universality = dominance needs to get in the sea immediately. Or else we all will.

[Bernice]

If that's the case though, what does "race" even mean anymore? It's undeniably real, but in one specific way its incontrovertibly not real, its salient to experience, but in a way thats obvious to observers (race experts in universities) even if experiencers themselves are unaware (working class black and brown people who don't like race-based terminology), etc. Its constructed by discourses and social activities, but any notion that social action might change or efface it is offensive?

Its a very strange concept to resurrect in this way, based around one specific group of legalistic ideas in contradiction to everything else. Its hardly consistent. Such a weird, toxic word to go Humpty Dumpty about.

In what way? Surely the above is talking about the material effects of a society in which racial categories persist rather than a racial taxonomy of humanity. Or have I misunderstood you? Surely "the experiencers themselves" can be "unaware" of the class structures to which they belong - it's an analysis of the material conditions of people's lives that bear it out regardless.

EDIT: You've clarified a bit further since I started writing and answered some of the above.

Nope, I'd say you are the one performing the sleight of hand; a well heeled one around "colour blindness" and that not recognising race as a reality is the same as not fighting racism.

Racism is real; race isn't - I couldn't be more clear on that.

Racism is the salient factor in peoples lives not race; and reducing groups down to race as a solution is unsurprisingly reductionist and lends itself to promote racism itself.

I think this is hard to discuss without concrete examples. Do we not run the risk here of mistaking shorthand for racial essentialism? When people use the category "black" in a discussion about "race", is it not implied that they're talking about a social category within a discussion of racism?

[chveik]

Badiou has spoken/written about climate change extensively, but its always in the frame of his own arcane re-definition of what 'nature' means, so maybe that doesn't count. He's argued against both 'nature' as a depoliticised field that delimits politics and 'nature' as just as construct of human scientific discourses and the limits of technology. I guess main complaint is that as one of the major voices in the 'old left' who advocates for migrant or undocumented workers, Badiou has never really definitely drawn a line from climate deplacement to worker migrancy? He's said that the abolition of private property is the major, immediate imperative provoked by climate change - and, he's not wrong is he? (unless you're not a Marxist)

i guess what i meant is that the universal truth defined by Humanity is not much use when they aren't any humans around... i dunno really

[Video Game Fan 2000]

i'm a bit in a double bind about this because on the one hand i can see how it can alienate working class minorities and i wouldn't particularly trust some of the people using these categories that way in leading a leftist movement but on the other hand the whole debate highlights how fucking racist french society still is, and it'd be weird to think people using those terms are directly at fault.

To be reductive I think the problem is the contradiction between those who want to talk constantly about race and colonialism and those who want to do things about it, and its becoming increasingly hard for the left to reach out to working class minorities as actors rather than people who give them a voice. Giving them a voice is not enough. There is a growing contempt for representationalism, of which american race politics and intersectionality and the like, is seen as a part.

[TrenterPercenter]

I think it's useful to think about them together instead of thinking of class as a dominant category that makes other ones useless.

You keep saying this and it isn't true.

Adolphus Reed and Cornell West do not think racism doesn't exist and that approaches to fighting it are useless; it is completely insincere or delusional to think otherwise.

This is sophistry; it is setting the terms on something that isn't real; Marxists don't care about racism; yes we do; I'm saying it now, here is the evidence; most of the contemporary anti-racists movements of the past were proudly Marxist. The criticism is of a particular approach to allegedly tackling racism that engages in race reductionism itself that is being criticised; not anti-racism as a whole.

"Yes but class doesn't recognise racism exists, it can't because it is only about economics...."

rinse and repeat.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

i guess what i meant is that the universal truth defined by Humanity is not much use when they aren't any humans around... i dunno really

God, nothing entertains me more than devils advocating Badiou but you know he has a full endorsement of Meillassoux's "fossil argument" and argument for ancestrality in both of the sequels volumes to Being and Event? He absolutely open to this and the critique that his theory of truth is terminally anthropocentric belongs mainly to people like Graham Harman.

There is an interview from the 1990s where he gets attacked for not including animals in his ethical system though, I forget which books its in but its a very entertaining read.

[TrenterPercenter]

Universalising (or making generic) class isn't the same as making it dominant. I hate this idea that because something is applicable across groups it means it is dominant or some such. Class is the category of how things relate, how relations work, how things are structured - rather than a specific position in a relation or a specific place in a structure itself. Understanding it this way, and how it is part of all other other social or political groups isn't to make it "dominant" over the others, its to understand how political subjectivity emerges, and what kind of things it can achieve.

I've said this repeated times to AllisonSays and they appear to have no intention of accepting or engaging with this information.

[AllisonSays]

I think that you say one thing and then do another, in the way you talk about racism, for instance, where you clearly understand class to be anterior to, or more important than, race.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

I'm really not sure where the hierarchy is supposed to come in, or why anterior = more important.

If I think class is 'anterior' to race in the sense that class is a conceptual vocabulary we use to talk about political and economic structures and relations, that doesn't mean its more important, because I agree strongly with what chveik said about universal politics being the affirmation of singular points of resistance.

I guess I don't see socially legible power relations penetrating this deeply into thought or language. If resistance to inequality exists, then so too must a least some measure of autonomy.

[TrenterPercenter]

I think that you say one thing and then do another, in the way you talk about racism, for instance, where you clearly understand class to be anterior to, or more important than, race.

Give me the evidence and examples please.......

[chveik]

God, nothing entertains me more than devils advocating Badiou but you know he has a full endorsement of Meillassoux's "fossil argument" and argument for ancestrality in both of the sequels volumes to Being and Event? He absolutely open to this and the critique that his theory of truth is terminally anthropocentric belongs mainly to people like Graham Harman.

There is an interview from the 1990s where he gets attacked for not including animals in his ethical system though, I forget which books its in but its a very entertaining read.

heh my mémoire was on Meillassoux... i know it's more complex and that some academics tend to turn him into a caricature, it's just that my brain's turned to mush since then and that articulating concepts in english is hard for me.

(i dunno about the animal thing, the guy writes too many books)

[Video Game Fan 2000]

heh my mémoire was on Meillassoux...

BUDDYLISTED

[Video Game Fan 2000]

does that mean you've read L'inexistence divine?

[madhair60]

Threads that are the same title as my reason for dismissal from the post office!!!!!!!

[Video Game Fan 2000]

Threads that are the same title as my reason for dismissal from the post office!!!!!!!

postman pat
postman pat
well i'll be fucked
10 pages of that?

[chveik]

To be reductive I think the problem is the contradiction between those who want to talk constantly about race and colonialism and those who want to do things about it, and its becoming increasingly hard for the left to reach out to working class minorities as actors rather than people who give them a voice. Giving them a voice is not enough. There is a growing contempt for representationalism, of which american race politics and intersectionality and the like, is seen as a part.

yeah that's fair enough. but at the same time the way public figures from those minorities that are working class themselves are treated by the media makes it pretty hard to 'reach out' to others.  i guess it's that whole horrible 'islamo-gauchiste' debate that made more tolerant of views using the 'race' category, when it's rooted in activism and not in liberal politics.

[chveik]

does that mean you've read L'inexistence divine?

parts of it, on a really cheap uni scan

[Video Game Fan 2000]

yeah that's fair enough. but at the same time the way public figures from those minorities that are working class themselves are treated by the media makes it pretty hard to 'reach out' to others.  i guess it's that whole horrible 'islamo-gauchiste' debate that made more tolerant of views using the 'race' category, when it's rooted in activism and not in liberal politics.

This is obv on the money, but I'm not sure if 'activism' is the right word considering that french 'militancy' includes both direct political action and anglo-style nonprofit 'activism' that is basically nonpolitical awareness raising. I don't really want to get into this stuff here but its disastrous for the French left that the 'decolonial' movement has turned into such a shitstorm with equal parts grifters and actual militants sharing the same point on the political compass - which is obviously a gift for those who are terrified  of "islamo-gauchism" because the grifters speak directly to them and amplify their fears, and in return they speak directly to the grifters, creating all the theater they need (and drowning out the reds and the greens in the process). There seems to be a contempt for people who want to talk constantly about race and culture (on all sides of the political spectrum) but don't want to do anything about it, and I think this isolates minorities - who see themselves constantly spoken for, spoken about, addressed, turned in fodder for advertisements and cultural panics etc. with very little material action or support coming from even major left parties. I think my opinion of Melenchon should be obvious. You start splitting politics up into a proliferation of smaller 'struggles' and its the small groups themselves who come off on the losing end of the deal, because they're the ones who stand to gain most from a mass movement - god, this used to be Marxism 101, cold sucks its the heterodox edgelord opinion now.


And french twitter is horrific, seems like a nonstop blast of racism and rape threats. Everytime I see it its like a solid wall of attacks against Muslims or black public figures. Ban it

[MoreauVasz]

And french twitter is horrific, seems like a nonstop blast of racism and rape threats. Everytime I see it its like a solid wall of attacks against Muslims or black public figures. Ban it

I read a blog post about some French twitter sports bloke who had died and they said of him 'he was part of French twitter and actually nice!'

[SOMK]

The problem with a fixation on race and gender is more 'alternative'/minority' voices in media and boardrooms is not an existential threat to power, in the same way a class based analysis based on who owns what is, so it is Google & Facebook can put a float in San Fransisco pride whilst at the same time helping to foster the kind of gentrification that destroyed San Francisco's Alternative Culture scene and you can point this out on your android phone using a facebook owned social media app.

The things that led to many racist policies, alarm by the early American ruling class over slaves and lower class europeans socialising with one another and the existential threat of them finding common cause was solved by the invention of whiteness, that is a premium given to so-called whites over so-called blacks, so it was a white could own blacks, but a black could never own a white (this was unique to the United States, there were black slave owners in the Caribbean). So it was in the sprit of paying one half of the working class to murder the other half, whites were given a premium above black, creating an idea that their whiteness was worth something and therefore was something under perpetual threat from blackness. So it is to this day that the areas of America most strongly associated with racial ideology are also the areas where working class people are paid the least, proving to a degree that notions of white superiority run contra to the interests of the people who hold those beliefs. Theodore Allen's the invention of the white race is worth a read on this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XntB31Kkj4

That's not the system we live under any more, the means of control and manipulation are far more insidious and sophisticated. Something like Black Lives Matter begins as a street movement, then gets coopted by the universities until finally it in effect becomes an arm of the Democrats.

There is a peculiarity to American race politics that gets universalised to becoming all race politics, when it is not. It stems from a particular and historical policy of division along racial lines that is still manifest today in America in the fact that racial statistics are part of the census whereas somewhere like Sweden such statistics would be illegal to gather.

A lot of people associated with the post left are on a grift, the whole sub stack culture is based off a model of stirring up controversy, you can appeal to a wide spectrum of people by modelling yourself as an 'anti-left leftist' much in the same way "billionaires hate this one simple trick". All these people are chasing a large audience not a niche one, so positioning yourself as the anti-left leftist is a marketing game to appeal to reactionaries who can't admit to themselves they are reactionaries, namely liberals.


There are some fair game comments you can through at the left as a construct, the left/right dichotomy stemming from 18th century French politics that don't really map onto our politics today (or even then, as the Church representatives in the National Assembly sat on the right side were often poorer than the average town lawyer who represented the people on the left). If crudely the right represents established order, then wouldn't modern anti-vaxxers be sat on the left side of the assembly?

Also the whole Nietzsche comment about the left being essentially a form of secularised moralising.

But yeah broadly post-leftists are rum Here is a useful bit from the excellent Varn Vlog where he speaks to this a bit https://youtu.be/abgUI_oMdSg?t=4162