Always performing as a great provocateur, Walter Benn Michaels at a recent conference on campus asked: "Why should anyone care about what has happened in the past?" This question is loaded, because it indexes his critique of the way identity politics have been positioned to assert that the solution for latter-day inequalities can only be found through understanding the past. While Michaels focuses on how identity politics has failed to produce economic equality, I think he misses the boat in terms of how identity politics enables an ethical recognition that, in fact, presupposes economic equality.
Yet I would give to him the insight that contemporary identitarian discourses capitalize on difference in such a way that produces unequal systems of recognition. But, at the same time, I think it's important to realize that racism and sexism can be so systemic that an explicit discourse needs to be fashioned that will intervene in the body politic to see to it that bodies and individuals are respected.
In summary, on the level of theory WBM's ideas are great; but on the lived, embodied, and always embattled level, his attempt to get post-identitarian is hauntingly problematic.
No comments:
Post a Comment