DagSeoul: Positions, Populations, Punk, Poetics

Christians on Korea: Their prayers for others soothes their fears

You know what’s not funny: tumblr Christians asking bloggers to pray for Korea and Koreans. Who gives a shit about savior social justice when it comes to Christians? I don’t. So many atheist, white feminist and positivist bloggers doing the same bullshit everyday. I’m not going to make white supremacist patriarchy a Christian thing, even though they do excel at it, but… . Here’s the problem with these kinds of prayers. Millions of DRPK citizens struggle under the boot of sanctions, among other oppressions that come with enforced poverty. They have struggled for a couple of generations now and no daily peep, but Americans feel threatened with violence and all of a sudden Koreans need prayers. Koreans need the prayer. Let’s be honest, about this kind of evangelical Christianity: it incessantly addresses itself in public. Others exist solely as a means to address itself. That’s fucked, and it’s most pervasive these days in hipster Christian circles where many wannabe cool kids hang out and inject local communities’ social justice discourse and action with their reactionary struggles with others and self.

dagNotes: on social justice and tumblr identity politics

The problem with much identity politics is that it dwells in disconnected moments of oppression in contemporaneity* to produce an agglomeration of oppressions that simply cannot adhere without the glue of nationalism, which comes with its own oppressive state apparatuses, and the glean of consumerism, which comes with standardized looks and appearances that individuals can own that are also oppressive.

And I do mean “dwells”, as illustrated on tumblr where baiting occurs. Post a look, circulate it, wait for an oppressive response to it, then point out the oppression and collect receipts. This is nothing more than to agglomerate oppressions: purely disconnected and uninterested moments of oppressions, little singularities, that deny an adhesive and cohesive movement contra oppression in capitalist culture because the moments transgressing oppressive discourse are merely personal statements of disgust and revulsion that can lead to little more than receipts of prior bad acts and that are owned, collected, by bloggers.

*fleeting moments of repeated (generalities of) oppressions; a collection of heres and nows that can be recalled and archived. 

—In fact, identity politics out here is terribly anti-dialectical and ahistorical.

"Becoming certificated by the state as proficient in literary studies is a matter of being able to talk and write in certain ways. It is this which is being taught, examined, and certificated, not what you personally think or believe, though what is thinkable will of course be constrained by the language itself. You can think or believe what you want, as long as you can speak this particular language. Nobody is especially concerned about what you say, with what extreme, moderate, radical or conservative positions you adopt, provided that they are compatible with, and can be articulated within, a specific form of discourse. It is just that certain meanings and positions will not be articulable within it. Literary studies, in other words, are a question of the signifier, not of the signified. Those employed to teach you this form of discourse will remember whether or not you were able to speak it proficiently long after they have forgotten what you said."

Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction [2nd Ed.] (1996; p. 175)

My one goal as a teacher is to break this rule. When Eagleton is good, he’s very good. This is why social justice education, what it has become (praxis) not so much the best of its theories, sucks.

(Source: ghostdad-ebooks)

It’s as if people believe that without white people, capitalism would be ok. 

dagArchives: Writing about Whiteness, White Privilege, Crass Libertarianism Super-Post

dagseoul:

Always looking for conversation about these things.

dagseoul:

In June last year, I began working on how I write about whiteness, white power, capitalism, and anti-capitalism mainly to develop concepts that are central to a manuscript I’m working on. Immediately, I was engaged by two groups of tumblr bloggers: libertarians and social justice bloggers. Neither appreciate my representations of free market capitalism and white social justice activists. Too bad, right.

I’ve received several requests for a post with links to what I’ve written. This is not everything, but it includes the posts where I work on concepts I think are significant.

I’m into revision, so I’ve edited and proofed and added a little here and there, but this is mostly as it was posted. You can use this long post if you like as each entry is present after “Read More”, or save the individual links. I’ll add to it as people help me find things I’ve written that they’d like included.

1. dagNotes: Notes On Whiteness, White Power, Capitalism & Anti-Capitalism
2. On Crass Libertarianism (a vehicle for white supremacist capitalist society)
3. dagNotes: A little bit on how I see privilege and white power working, even in Korea
4. White Power 101: White Privilege Denial Discourse
5. Why it’s racist. In one sentence.
6. (On why colorblindness is white supremacist.)
7. To Ziggystardyke: On Being White
8. dagNotes: The reason I wrote “White is not a skin color”
9. dagAsk: Three Lessons
10. Possessive Whiteness
11. 11A. Possessive Whiteness and Liberals:
12. dagNotes: on writing about whiteness
13. My Super-Post on Crass Libertarianism, Liberty, Ideology, Ron Paul fans

Read More

Curriculum for Whiteness: Authenticity

dagseoul:

It’s not authentic until it’s white feels and white tears.

file the white apology as an example of this.

dagArchives: Writing about Whiteness, White Privilege, Crass Libertarianism Super-Post

Always looking for conversation about these things.

dagseoul:

In June last year, I began working on how I write about whiteness, white power, capitalism, and anti-capitalism mainly to develop concepts that are central to a manuscript I’m working on. Immediately, I was engaged by two groups of tumblr bloggers: libertarians and social justice bloggers. Neither appreciate my representations of free market capitalism and white social justice activists. Too bad, right.

I’ve received several requests for a post with links to what I’ve written. This is not everything, but it includes the posts where I work on concepts I think are significant.

I’m into revision, so I’ve edited and proofed and added a little here and there, but this is mostly as it was posted. You can use this long post if you like as each entry is present after “Read More”, or save the individual links. I’ll add to it as people help me find things I’ve written that they’d like included.

1. dagNotes: Notes On Whiteness, White Power, Capitalism & Anti-Capitalism
2. On Crass Libertarianism (a vehicle for white supremacist capitalist society)
3. dagNotes: A little bit on how I see privilege and white power working, even in Korea
4. White Power 101: White Privilege Denial Discourse
5. Why it’s racist. In one sentence.
6. (On why colorblindness is white supremacist.)
7. To Ziggystardyke: On Being White
8. dagNotes: The reason I wrote “White is not a skin color”
9. dagAsk: Three Lessons
10. Possessive Whiteness
11. 11A. Possessive Whiteness and Liberals:
12. dagNotes: on writing about whiteness
13. My Super-Post on Crass Libertarianism, Liberty, Ideology, Ron Paul fans

Read More

Curriculum for Whiteness: Authenticity

It’s not authentic until it’s white feels and white tears.

White Supremacist Rhetoric: The Standard Minority Experience

I’m reblogging this post because it’s the source of the claim that I like to tell people of color what to think and how to behave. I take the claim seriously. So, even though I disagree, I went back through my archives and thought about the charge. My writing below illustrates how white supremacist rhetoric composes discourse about “minority experience”. (It’s important that I don’t use the plural experiences. White supremacist rhetoric is about singularity.)

I was thinking about this post before the recent problems with social justice bloggers resurfaced because a blogger I respect, Hanguknamja, has been talking with me about the rhetoric in some of my claims. I think this post illustrates that I don’t see the supremacist rhetoric as necessary and determined. My claim is that in the attempt to become accepted within a racist social order—free market capitalism in the United States, in this instance—we (as composed subjects the social order of the free market standardizes as de-sexed, de-raced, de-classed individuals who can freely make choices) implement standards for experience, ways of speaking, about others regardless of who we are or how we respond to the power structure. My claim is we can work to betray this order and should be working to consider how. I do not think I know or understand how to do this. I think it’s easy for a guy like me to be anti-capitalist, for example, because I look like the ideal individual the order insists is standard. It’s much harder for a guy like me to make a line of flight, to make out for the territories, so to speak.

As a result, I don’t think I’m one to lead on something like this. That said, I don’t see any problem with pointing out how we can observe people implementing a standard minority experience in social justice discourse. I don’t see how we can achieve a more equal society by solely exposing racism. It’s always going to be there within our current market economy. If it’s there and we know it’s there what should we do? We must permit intersectionality in numerous ways, and I think we must confront capitalism. After all, its social order is white supremacist.

I’m not going to do what social justice wants from me: to simply play a social role that cultivates a corrupt social order that members of its community can denounce. That’s useless. Hanguknamja is correct to worry about the determinisms in the rhetoric about white supremacy. However, their presence doesn’t mean I’m passively embracing and implementing them. I hope we can work together to figure a way out of the too simple naturalisms in capitalist social order.

colorblinding:

dagseoul:

Reblogging this because it got lost behind my tit-4-tat with pragmatic-realist. I think my claim deserves attention within the strident social justice blogging community. Who, when confronted with divergence from the standard discourse and other general disagreements, immediately point the finger and accuse others (mostly poc) of anti-blackness, among other things. It’s vacant, meaningless, self-serving crap.

I wrote this because I don’t think social justice folks are very interested in considering the problems with immigrant narratives nor how such narratives betray the cultivation of a standard minority experience in the US and other places. I’m of the opinion that social justice is nothing more than a progressive ruse for supporting white supremacy. On tumblr, it’s certainly nothing more than reactionary discourse aimed at telling on bloggers who are overtly racist, sexist, homo- or trans-phobic or confronting poc bloggers who transgress the accepted narrative of minority experience, which as I’ve argued before is created from white ideological representations of others.

I am explicitly claiming that poc bloggers often use white ideological representations and narratives for minority communities to discipline transgressive poc dissent. That’s a bunch of racist bullshit, imo.

In other words, the social justice community likes to point out the obvious bigotry and scapegoat transgressive poc.

dagseoul:

Tired of reading posts where people attempt to justify standardizing/quantifying various narratives of oppression and privilege to compare “racial” groups in order to argue which groups are more or less privileged, hence, more or less oppressed. This isn’t going to cut it and for one very important reason. Quite frankly, it’s a white man’s game. As such, it’s reactionary and regressive.

If we’re speaking of privilege in communities of color in the US, then we’re examining individuals (and the communities they represent) who have been interpellated as white subjects. To use those interpellated subjects as if they usefully represent actual communities of color, in other words as well-defined minority communities, reinforces the white power structure. Why do we insist on objectifying—using quantities and percentages—to talk about oppression, or worse “the oppressed”? I think it makes it easier to ignore history, for one thing, and easier to cultivate a proper, umambiguous, and standard civility for traditionally white scientific discourse about society as a whole.

How can we compare Asian-American experience(s) of oppression and privilege to Black experience(s) of oppression and privilege without necessarily standardizing their experiences as a standard minority experience (SME) thus privileging the notion that communities of color are monoliths of ethnic experience organized according to dominant white modes of observation. White power helps creates an SME that permits comparison across “color”. White power literally counts on it. We criticize this attempt to standardize narratives of experience when we see it in colorblind discourse, don’t we? Why not everywhere it’s implemented, then?

In my opinion, this standardization becomes more problematic when we consider immigrants and immigration.

Why is this not reblogged more? There need to be notes ALL OVER THIS. I do not understand why there aren’t! 

dagNotes: On Freedom; Or, Why I don’t trust most white people.

dagseoul:

They believe they have a freedom that, factually and historically, no person of color has, the freedom (to pretend) to be ignorant of difference. The performance of this ignorance to others—white and not-white—is one of the most pervasive and irritating aspects of everyday whiteness. This freedom is a distinctly white privilege. I’d say, this freedom is the most recognizable marker for whiteness as it’s the most ordinary in appearance. People who can be free from knowing about others who are not white are fully composed white individuals. The others-to-be-ignorant-of are composed white subjects. The relation is inherently oppressive. One group is liberated while the others are bound. 

In the US, the social interpellation process is one of becoming white, living with whiteness, bargaining with white power, coping with white supremacy. It’s violent, interpellative social action. It occurs where all social action is organized, within the free market. Thus, it is both passively and actively consumed. It’s both affliction and consolation. Those who are afflicted are passively composed white subjects who endure composition regardless; those who are consoled are actively composed white individuals who answer an invitation to composition without endurance. It’s from this interpellation the supremacist conception of the individual and its western philosophical tradition springs. Capitalism has embraced this conception from its beginnings and has sublimated the concept in its contemporary state. Hence, white individuals are often aggressively recalcitrant participants in anti-racist action; obstinate and uncooperative toward the authority in any discourse that confronts white supremacy, yet passively obeisant to the authority in white power. For example, we’re asked to embrace an equality and social justice discourse that ignores oppressive power relationships in exchange for attention to singular issues that fail to significantly confront white supremacy and its power structure. We must talk about distribution of goods and services; we must address all individuals as consumers and employees. In other words, we are always already encouraged to see others without difference, to see others as if we all are equally born, that we are, in a significant manner, equivalencies.

It’s a rare occurrence to find a white person unconditionally willing to betray the authority in whiteness. And it’s why I’m dutifully mean about it with white tumblr bloggers; as mean as I am about it IRL. I won’t permit the passive violence in white power between social liberals to sit unexamined and have made a promise to return any and all forms of violence with like violence. I’m especially mean to tepid social justice discourse that pushes for the degraded equality I discussed just above. I expect the libertarian white boys to deny all of this outright. I expect more from people who claim enlightenment and progressivism.

I will do this until we reside in societies that have overcome white power. Don’t see that happening any time soon. So, fucking deal is my attitude. I can’t trust white people who aren’t willing to betray their permissive whiteness, their unexamined possessive-whiteness, their unearned ambition.

(via dagseoul)

dagNotes: On Freedom; Or, Why I don’t trust most white people.

dagseoul:

They believe they have a freedom that, factually and historically, no person of color has, the freedom (to pretend) to be ignorant of difference. The performance of this ignorance to others—white and not-white—is one of the most pervasive and irritating aspects of everyday whiteness. This freedom is a distinctly white privilege. I’d say, this freedom is the most recognizable marker for whiteness as it’s the most ordinary in appearance. People who can be free from knowing about others who are not white are fully composed white individuals. The others-to-be-ignorant-of are composed white subjects. The relation is inherently oppressive. One group is liberated while the others are bound. 

In the US, the social interpellation process is one of becoming white, living with whiteness, bargaining with white power, coping with white supremacy. It’s violent, interpellative social action. It occurs where all social action is organized, within the free market. Thus, it is both passively and actively consumed. It’s both affliction and consolation. Those who are afflicted are passively composed white subjects who endure composition regardless; those who are consoled are actively composed white individuals who answer an invitation to composition without endurance. It’s from this interpellation the supremacist conception of the individual and its western philosophical tradition springs. Capitalism has embraced this conception from its beginnings and has sublimated the concept in its contemporary state. Hence, white individuals are often aggressively recalcitrant participants in anti-racist action; obstinate and uncooperative toward the authority in any discourse that confronts white supremacy, yet passively obeisant to the authority in white power. For example, we’re asked to embrace an equality and social justice discourse that ignores oppressive power relationships in exchange for attention to singular issues that fail to significantly confront white supremacy and its power structure. We must talk about distribution of goods and services; we must address all individuals as consumers and employees. In other words, we are always already encouraged to see others without difference, to see others as if we all are equally born, that we are, in a significant manner, equivalencies.

It’s a rare occurrence to find a white person unconditionally willing to betray the authority in whiteness. And it’s why I’m dutifully mean about it with white tumblr bloggers; as mean as I am about it IRL. I won’t permit the passive violence in white power between social liberals to sit unexamined and have made a promise to return any and all forms of violence with like violence. I’m especially mean to tepid social justice discourse that pushes for the degraded equality I discussed just above. I expect the libertarian white boys to deny all of this outright. I expect more from people who claim enlightenment and progressivism.

I will do this until we reside in societies that have overcome white power. Don’t see that happening any time soon. So, fucking deal is my attitude. I can’t trust white people who aren’t willing to betray their permissive whiteness, their unexamined possessive-whiteness, their unearned ambition.

dagNotes: On Freedom; Or, Why I don’t trust most white people.

They believe they have a freedom that, factually and historically, no person of color has,  the freedom (to pretend) to be ignorant of difference. The performance of this ignorance to others—white and not-white—is one of the most pervasive and irritating aspects of everyday whiteness. This freedom is a distinctly white privilege. I’d say, this freedom is the most recognizable marker for whiteness as it’s the most ordinary in appearance. People who can be free from knowing about others who are not white are fully composed white individuals. The others-to-be-ignorant-of are composed white subjects. The relation is inherently oppressive. One group is liberated while the others are bound. 

In the US, the social interpellation process is one of becoming white, living with whiteness, bargaining with white power, coping with white supremacy. It’s violent, interpellative social action. It occurs where all social action is organized, within the free market. Thus, it is both passively and actively consumed. It’s both affliction and consolation. Those who are afflicted are passively composed white subjects who endure composition regardless; those who are consoled are actively composed white individuals who answer an invitation to composition without endurance. It’s from this interpellation the supremacist conception of the individual and its western philosophical tradition springs. Capitalism has embraced this conception from its beginnings and has sublimated the concept in its contemporary state. Hence, white individuals are often aggressively recalcitrant participants in anti-racist action; obstinate and uncooperative toward the authority in any discourse that confronts white supremacy, yet passively obeisant to the authority in white power. For example, we’re asked to embrace an equality and social justice discourse that ignores oppressive power relationships in exchange for attention to singular issues that fail to significantly confront white supremacy and its power structure. We must talk about distribution of goods and services; we must address all individuals as consumers and employees. In other words, we are always already encouraged to see others without difference, to see others as if we all are equally born, that we are, in a significant manner, equivalencies.

It’s a rare occurrence to find a white person unconditionally willing to betray the authority in whiteness. And it’s why I’m dutifully mean about it with white tumblr bloggers; as mean as I am about it IRL. I won’t permit the passive violence in white power between social liberals to sit unexamined and have made a promise to return any and all forms of violence with like violence. I’m especially mean to tepid social justice discourse that pushes for the degraded equality I discussed just above. I expect the libertarian white boys to deny all of this outright. I expect more from people who claim enlightenment and progressivism.

I will do this until we reside in societies that have overcome white power. Don’t see that happening any time soon. So, fucking deal is my attitude. I can’t trust white people who aren’t willing to betray their permissive whiteness, their unexamined possessive-whiteness, their unearned ambition.

dagWeek

Been a busy week. Lots of reading; lots of writing.

1. Notes On the Counter-Revolutionary Libertarian

When you say ”individual freedom,” when you refer to yourself as ”an individualist,” I hear regression, reaction, resentment. I need evidence you’ve not merely & uncritically co-opted fashionable capitalist terminology, asserting that amorphous desire, popularly, to be free from others. I’m not sure we can claim individuality qua individualism without first critically examining the role capitalism plays in composing subjects as individuals. In other words, I don’t think you know what that word means when you use it the way you do.

Libertarians use the verb to volunteer. To volunteer always presupposes the ability to afford to volunteer.

2. Notes On Social Justice As Apparent Social Action

Popular social justice discourse is about persons and their bodies—a process of individuation, to be sure, a process of singling out not from others who may be different but from others who are like me.

On Sameness. Popular social justice discourse is about possessiveness and possessions. It solidifies a kind of apparent social action removing social justice action from the street and relocating it within a kind of discourse where anybody can claim to be a member simply by learning how to speak after a certain fashion and to talk-the-talk. In this manner, social justice action becomes about that author, that man, that woman, that male body, that female body any individual can distinguish him or her self from. We should recognize the negative quality of such action. It transforms social space into individual spaces and action that insists collective action into vulgar actions that asserts a not me and impose a series of withdrawals of another one individual from a perceived oppressive social apparatus. It exchanges complex and public transformation of social space for ephemeral and private, individual actions. Social justice action thus becomes rhetorical, little more than an utterance.

• “I’m not … I am …” becomes the way we are asked to speak. (Reminds me of Dr Pepper’s ads when I was a kid that insisted to be a Pepper was as easy as buying a Dr Pepper.) This is particularly in fashion with young activists who’ve been educated to purchase their social values as they’d purchase commodities. They can afford social justice. It’s cheap. It’s useful in social discourse.
• I feel (the imposition of the law of the heart) is much more important than I understand.

3. Reading Human Action. Due to LP’s busy work-week, we’ll get going soon. We’re moving on to the next 75 pages in our reading. I’ve been focused on Mises’s use of indvidual and destiny.

Capitalist subjects are composed as a kind of individual on a spectrum of individuals and individuality with The Capitalist located at the top of the hierarchy and collectivists at the lower end, according to crass libertarianism, at least. The hierarchy represents a moving from the bottom as debased individuals to the top as a refined and liberated individual. Such ontology uses facile binaries. It’s a revisionary process (distinct from revolutionary as I’d argue it’s counter-revolutionary, reactionary. See all Ayn Rand and Hayek’s social theory.) The Individual is an ontological concept that may or may not have some more primary meaning outside of capitalist ontology. Certainly, libertarians persist in conflating individualism with the practice of liberty. To be an individual is thus to be socially determined and for a specific reason.

If you’re reading Human Action with us, you’ll notice that Mises uncritically implements a destiny individuals are being toward. I don’t like that. We should insist that the concept has a history. After all, does one need capitalist society to be an individual? Isn’t the word socially and culturally over-determined? 

4. meditations on whiteness

If there’s not a sense to go with it, then it’s not a real thought. No truth without sense. That’s Hume. I was thinking about this while listening to a discussion on Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations. And I thought, except for whiteness. Whiteness is a concept with no sense to it for white people. Whiteness insists this is so. In other words, it’s a truth without sense. It’s nothing but a thing for white people. This might explain why white people see blackness, for example, as oppressive and unfair, because it demands a sense—blackness is something other than other and black people are going to work on what it is without white people. Thus, blackness demands whiteness has a sense: systemized racist power structure that works via interpellation. Whiteness is an assumed necessity that blackness challenges. Whiteness believes it is the that without which capitalist society would not exist. Don’t see it? The Republican National Convention spent an entire evening insisting that THEY built IT. Blackness insists otherwise. Blackness will always be radical in white supremacist culture because it represents an excess that traditional racist society cannot express in a simple binary.

5. And from the archives:

• dagAsk: Three Lessons
• Writing about Whiteness, White Privilege, Crass Libertarianism Super-Post

dagSeoul: Writing about Whiteness, White Privilege, Crass Libertarianism Super-Post

dagseoul:

In June last year, I began working on how I write about whiteness, white power, capitalism, and anti-capitalism mainly to develop concepts that are central to a manuscript I’m working on. Immediately, I was engaged by two groups of tumblr bloggers: libertarians and social justice bloggers. Neither appreciate my representations of free market capitalism and white social justice activists. Too bad, right.

I’ve received several requests for a post with links to what I’ve written. This is not everything, but it includes the posts where I work on concepts I think are significant.

I’m into revision, so I’ve edited and proofed and added a little here and there, but this is mostly as it was posted. You can use this long post if you like as each entry is present after “Read More”, or save the individual links. I’ll add to it as people help me find things I’ve written that they’d like included.

1. dagNotes: Notes On Whiteness, White Power, Capitalism & Anti-Capitalism
2. On Crass Libertarianism (a vehicle for white supremacist capitalist society)
3. dagNotes: A little bit on how I see privilege and white power working, even in Korea
4. White Power 101: White Privilege Denial Discourse
5. Why it’s racist. In one sentence.
6. (On why colorblindness is white supremacist.)
7. To Ziggystardyke: On Being White
8. dagNotes: The reason I wrote “White is not a skin color”
9. dagAsk: Three Lessons
10. Possessive Whiteness
11. 11A. Possessive Whiteness and Liberals:
12. dagNotes: on writing about whiteness
13. My Super-Post on Crass Libertarianism, Liberty, Ideology, Ron Paul fans

Read More

dagWeek

Been a busy week. Lots of reading; lots of writing.

1. Notes On the Counter-Revolutionary Libertarian

When you say ”individual freedom,” when you refer to yourself as ”an individualist,” I hear regression, reaction, resentment. I need evidence you’ve not merely & uncritically co-opted fashionable capitalist terminology, asserting that amorphous desire, popularly, to be free from others. I’m not sure we can claim individuality qua individualism without first critically examining the role capitalism plays in composing subjects as individuals. In other words, I don’t think you know what that word means when you use it the way you do.

Libertarians use the verb to volunteer. To volunteer always presupposes the ability to afford to volunteer.

2. Notes On Social Justice As Apparent Social Action

Popular social justice discourse is about persons and their bodies—a process of individuation, to be sure, a process of singling out not from others who may be different but from others who are like me.

On Sameness. Popular social justice discourse is about possessiveness and possessions. It solidifies a kind of apparent social action removing social justice action from the street and relocating it within a kind of discourse where anybody can claim to be a member simply by learning how to speak after a certain fashion and to talk-the-talk. In this manner, social justice action becomes about that author, that man, that woman, that male body, that female body any individual can distinguish him or her self from. We should recognize the negative quality of such action. It transforms social space into individual spaces and action that insists collective action into vulgar actions that asserts a not me and impose a series of withdrawals of another one individual from a perceived oppressive social apparatus. It exchanges complex and public transformation of social space for ephemeral and private, individual actions. Social justice action thus becomes rhetorical, little more than an utterance.

• “I’m not … I am …” becomes the way we are asked to speak. (Reminds me of Dr Pepper’s ads when I was a kid that insisted to be a Pepper was as easy as buying a Dr Pepper.) This is particularly in fashion with young activists who’ve been educated to purchase their social values as they’d purchase commodities. They can afford social justice. It’s cheap. It’s useful in social discourse.
• I feel (the imposition of the law of the heart) is much more important than I understand.

3. Reading Human Action. Due to LP’s busy work-week, we’ll get going soon. We’re moving on to the next 75 pages in our reading. I’ve been focused on Mises’s use of indvidual and destiny.

Capitalist subjects are composed as a kind of individual on a spectrum of individuals and individuality with The Capitalist located at the top of the hierarchy and collectivists at the lower end, according to crass libertarianism, at least. The hierarchy represents a moving from the bottom as debased individuals to the top as a refined and liberated individual. Such ontology uses facile binaries. It’s a revisionary process (distinct from revolutionary as I’d argue it’s counter-revolutionary, reactionary. See all Ayn Rand and Hayek’s social theory.) The Individual is an ontological concept that may or may not have some more primary meaning outside of capitalist ontology. Certainly, libertarians persist in conflating individualism with the practice of liberty. To be an individual is thus to be socially determined and for a specific reason.

If you’re reading Human Action with us, you’ll notice that Mises uncritically implements a destiny individuals are being toward. I don’t like that. We should insist that the concept has a history. After all, does one need capitalist society to be an individual? Isn’t the word socially and culturally over-determined? 

4. meditations on whiteness

If there’s not a sense to go with it, then it’s not a real thought. No truth without sense. That’s Hume. I was thinking about this while listening to a discussion on Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations. And I thought, except for whiteness. Whiteness is a concept with no sense to it for white people. Whiteness insists this is so. In other words, it’s a truth without sense. It’s nothing but a thing for white people. This might explain why white people see blackness, for example, as oppressive and unfair, because it demands a sense—blackness is something other than other and black people are going to work on what it is without white people. Thus, blackness demands whiteness has a sense: systemized racist power structure that works via interpellation. Whiteness is an assumed necessity that blackness challenges. Whiteness believes it is the that without which capitalist society would not exist. Don’t see it? The Republican National Convention spent an entire evening insisting that THEY built IT. Blackness insists otherwise. Blackness will always be radical in white supremacist culture because it represents an excess that traditional racist society cannot express in a simple binary.