On Privilege and Sapir-Whorf

[alixtii]

For the record, I am white, male, heterosexual, middle-class, American, Christian, . . .  frankly? It'd be quicker to name the ways I'm not privileged.

I say this not because it's National Coming Out Day [I notebooked this post in class and on the train yesterday--Ed.] (although I sort of do want to make a long post about how I experience my heterosexuality, and how I feel certain labels apply to me, and what it means when everyone assumes those labels apply to me already anyway, but can't think of a way to do it that wouldn't make me feel like I'm appropriating), but because it means that I have pretty much two choices: I can, in the long tradition of privileged individuals, ignore my privilege, or I can learn to deal with it. I won't claim that I've done the latter; indeed, there is no doubt in my mind there are numerous ways in which I have not. What I have done is think a lot about what is the  best way to try.

Learning to deal with it is not necessarily accepting every claim made by a traditional victim (survivor?) of injustice. It is not to automatically agree that everything which is claimed to be descriminative or unjust or whatever-ist is. That'd be intellectual suicide, and an abrogation of one's moral responsibilities to boot. It may happen that, when all is said and done, when one looks at a situation from the perspective of who one is, there will still be disagreement. That's okay.

I vote for Party X (out of two choices, does any of my flisters really doubt which that is?) because my parents vote for Party X (or Party Q when they are reasonably sure Party Y won't win, as do I) and instilled me with the values that lead me to vote that way. Most likely, if my parents voted for Party Y than I would too. Recognizing this doesn't make me want to stop voting for Party X--I still think I am right to vote for Party X, and will continue to think so until convinced otherwise--but it does make me stop and think about why I am voting for Party X, to re-examine my premises.

Similarly, what is required when a claim of injustice is made is a pause, a hesitation, an honest assessment of oneself and one motives, and above all listening with an open mind.

. . .

While not all Earth languages share the S-V-O structure of English, they all share the conceptual apparatus which gives rise to it.

It may seem like I've just changed the subject. I haven't, not really.

. . .

If we accept as a premise the failure of Sapir-Whorf as an empirical thesis (I tend to approach the hypothesis as not so much wrong as "not even wrong"; indeed, I suspect that it holds true for a value of langue deeper than the grammatical structures which might vary from Earth language to Earth language, and for which such grammatical structures would be seen simply as their own type of parole (utterance)), then all of humanity shares a single conceptual network in common. This network need not be grounded in some concept of Chomskyan innateness (I'm not well-read enough in Chomsky to know how--or if--he turns such an idea into a falsifiable hypothesis); the networks can be a result of social processes, but if so they are process taking place on the level of the interlingual. (So Stranger in a Strange Land is still a possibility.)

This conceptual network can only be described as hegemonic.

Furthermore, this meta-langue does not unidimensionally generate language: instead it is the result of it; langue rises out of parole. There are no foundations.

This fact should give the radical (I'm not a believer that etymology is destiny, but it does seem important to remember that "radical" means "root") feminist hope; it is not necessary to eject the entire conceptual network in a single, wondrous gestalt shift (an impossible task in any case?). Changes to the surface by their nature work changes in the entire structure. Radical feminism thus always-already requires a liberal feminism upon which to fall back.

. . .

It is not possible to pull down the master's house without using the master's tools. The master's house is, of course, langue; the master's tools are parole.

The hope that we could avoid using the master's tools is a fundamentally liberal (i.e., non-radical) one: it is the hope that the problem does not really lie as deep as all that, that there is a "nature"--a real, a purity, an uncorrupted innocence, a ding-an-sich--which lies outside the master's influence for feminist to access.

Comments

[somercet.livejournal.com]

It is not possible to pull down the master's house without using the master's tools. The master's house is, of course, langue; the master's tools are parole.

Who is the master?

"It seems we're all set down here," an old woman said to me recently, "and no one knows why."
— Annie Dillard

I do not understand who this master you say feminists "must" be fighting is, unless of course you mean the tyranny of our mortal, limited bodies and minds, in which case the master is nature. Surely you cannot mean the male of the human species, who suffers from an inability to procreate, a basic function of life, without outside help?

Currently transgenderism and such related phenomena as SRS are much in the news. It is much easier to create a passable, but infertile, female from a male than the reverse. Who benefits from this inequality? Who suffers?

Could it be just the working out of thousand independent variables at random?

white, male, heterosexual, middle-class, American, Christian

Right now you are privileged. A few hundred years ago, had you lived in southeastern Europe, you might have been enslaved, castrated and shipped to the Ottoman Empire.

Western women, and more and more women of every culture, are walking the same path that the males only preceded them on. They are bumping against the limits of biology and economics (crude matter) on the one hand and the straining of civilization to keep up, to rewrite the rules as the seeming constants of all human history are swept away.

Thirty-eight years ago, the first creatures from Earth, aside from some few stray bacteria, stood on another planet. An entire constant of four billion years was swept away in a few years of preparation (on our part, at least) and three or four days of travel. It was replaced by a mere conditional: anyone you meet is probably an Earthling.

Nowadays, anyone you meet might be not a Terran but a Moon person. Maybe not now, but in a few years as history reckons, a colony might be set up there. 128 years separated Columbus from the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and they had air, water game and dirt to look forward to. Having to take all that with us, but being wiser and stronger, it will probably take us half that time to colonize the Moon.

From unuttered Truth to unjustified assumption in three or four days. All it took was a crazy German scientist, a few hundred thousand tons of rocket fuel and a few thousand metric assloads of money.

Ah, money. What a wonderful thing. Reading Alan Greenspan's memoirs reminds me of something very important: government intervention is the very last, worst resort. Markets (i.e., people) are flexible and resilient. How wonderful to think that if we keep on fostering growth, new forms of atomic power and ideas that we will soon be rich enough to buy our way out of almost all our problems and on our way to discovering even bigger, weirder problems.

Thank God I am a man, because men were first on this path and we don't waste our days blaming women for every tripping rock and branch on the path. And thank God I read Camille Paglia before I ever exposed myself to you or the people who ruined you, because I am now immune to bogus-Romantic, self-pitying whinging.

Good advice. (http://bukucomics.com/loserz/index.php?comicID=468)

The hope that we could avoid using the master's tools is a fundamentally liberal (i.e., non-radical) one: it is the hope that the problem does not really lie as deep as all that, that there is a "nature"--a real, a purity, an uncorrupted innocence, a ding-an-sich--which lies outside the master's influence for feminist to access.

No. There is no special reality. There is nothing beyond this. Innocence is nothing more than the shiny metal back of a brand new iPod: you'll be happier once you put a scratch in it as you'll stop worrying about "protecting" it all the time.

We are all in it. Always. We only see deeper, more clearly. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_relativity)

"The farther in you go, the bigger it gets."
— John Crowley

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

The system is the master. Patriarchy.

Privileged classes certainly get the better deal (not having to fight just to put food in our mouth), but the patriarchy screws with and messes up all of us.

Privilege is always context-based, but it is enlightening to see just how much of it is transhistorical. Men have pretty much always been given a better deal than women (even as, as a result of being forced into categories of masculinity, their lot might have sucked too--they were still better off than women). There are systems of oppression at work here--not just a lot of individuals doing bad things.

As seems to be a pattern when you comment in my journal, I have no idea how much of the rest of what you say relates in any way to what I have said above.

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

Surely you cannot mean the male of the human species, who suffers from an inability to procreate, a basic function of life, without outside help?

Because parthogenesis is so very extremely common?

Reading Alan Greenspan's memoirs reminds me of something very important: government intervention is the very last, worst resort.

As I mentioned in my comment above, I don't see how this responds in the least to anything I've said above. But I'll address it anyway.

Governmental intervention is, at its heart, a liberal feminist approach to the problem, not a radical feminist one. This is not to say there aren't times when governmental intervention isn't called for, especially in times when suffering is so extreme a work of mercy is required (e.g., the welfare state). But it works much worst as a system of social action, because it doesn't change minds quickly or directly. (It can create opportunites for minds to change on their own by creating inclusive environments, however.) What is need much more than governmental intervention is cultural intervention--a radical transformation of the culture industry itself.

[frogfarm]

It puts the lotion in the basket, or it gets the hose...

"The farther in you go, the bigger it gets."
— John Crowley

I bet Terence McKenna sounded funnier when he said it.