Identity Politics: the impasse, the debate, the thread.
- Thread starter danny la rouge
- Start date
I literally asked for that yesterday and was told it didn’t exist. £3.53, I paid! I will extract £2.53 worth of revenge.
Bit of wealth redistribution right there.
Brainaddict
slight system overdrive
Random thought for this thread. Was thinking the other day about how often leftish groups ask people to identify as oppressed. Class-focused people as well as identity-focused people. I think it can be very agitational when people are really in the shit (wages not enough to feed their kids, or racist police harassing them in the street daily) but once people have even a small level of comfort in life it is often not a welcome framing. It's a dead end whenever you frame oppression as being key to who you are, and I reckon that's very apparent to people who aren't immersed in lots of abstract theory.
Left groups don’t ask people to identify as oppressed. Left groups identify that people are oppressed, whether they have realised it or not.
hitmouse
so defeated, thinks it's funny
I mean, I suppose people at what I'd think of as the more u75 end of the left, or ultra-left or insisting that you please don't call them left or whatever, the anarcho/autonomisty/workerist side of things, would say that's what's different about class, that asking people to have a class perspective is not just about seeing yourself as oppressed/exploited but also about being part of a group that makes up the vast majority of the population, keeps society running and so holds immense power. Without our brain and muscle not a single wheel can turn, picture of a hospitalised copper, that sort of thing. How effective they/we are at communicating that message is another question, though.
Brainaddict
slight system overdrive
Yeah, I know, but I feel like it's often seen as the first step to convince people they are exploited, and then the next step to convince people they have the power if they are willling to step up and take it. And often that first step fails, because people like their job or their boss, or because even if they don't their job gives them a sense of worth so they don't want to undermine that by turning themselves into the victim, or because their salary is enough for a house and a car and holidays so how bad is that really, or - and I think this is sometimes true among low-salaried people - just because it would seem to them to be admitting to weakness to cast themselves as being exploited. Additionally in a post-Thatcher society a lot of people might see themselves as temporarily exploited and moving on to better things soon, so why bother focusing on the exploitation - just plot your route out.
I suppose you could start your pitch to workers by talking about their importance in the economy and their latent power. I'd be interested in seeing the results of starting with that rather than starting with them being exploited. Alas social movements don't always experiment as much as they could, or at least they don't do it in formalised enough ways that you can be sure of the outcome.
Brainaddict
slight system overdrive
And then they go and tell people they are oppressed, and that that is a defining feature of their place in society.
danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
I’m imagining Frank and Nancy singing this post.
Smokeandsteam
Working Class First
And conversely the development of identity politics has become a) utterly abstracted from our material relationships with the economy, state and society and b) a set of demands for disparity correction within the current structures. As such it often manifests in division and moralising attitudes instead of facilitating wider solidarities.
danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
Ooh, good phrase. I might steal that.
Smokeandsteam
Working Class First
Help yourself, I nicked it from Adolf Reed Jr!…
The Trouble with Disparity
Every time racial disparity is invoked as the lens through which to see American inequality, the overwhelming role played by the increased inequality in the American class system is made invisible. And this is, of course, true on the right as well as the left—think of all the conservative...
nonsite.org
A380
How do I change this 'custom title' thing then?
The trouble is that can lead down the same rabbit hole Baader Minehoff/RAF went down. I.e upper middle class people thinking that the working class weren't clever enough to see the oppression and so committing actions with the intent of making the lives of working people worse through bringing down the weight of the state upon them in the hope the working class would then rise up. And of course the strata of society from which the activist came was less affected by any state response. There was one small problem with this strategy.
It was bollocks.
But you can still see echos today in every middle class revolutionary sneering about 'reformists' whist wondering if the Algarve will stay green long enough for a quick autumn get away.
hitmouse
so defeated, thinks it's funny
Practical critique.
I like almost all the pamphlet. So do I talk about the 20 pages I agree with or the 2 pages that I am more dubious about?
What do you think? Of course I talk about the bit I'm less keen on.
The two pages in question are those on "cultural relativism". My issues on this are that firstly, I think it portrays a caricature, which it then attacks as a strawman. And secondly, I think that even on its own terms, even ignoring this caricature, it misunderstands (or at leasts fails to engage with) the complexity of how culture mediates thought.
So, the caricature. The argument is that those who engage in identity politics are somehow giving a free pass to other cultures. Furthermore, they are actually attacking those who do not. The claim on p.9 is, "One of the main problems with cultural relativism is that no one is allowed to criticise another culture because if right and wrong are relative... there is no objective way of assessing any idea of practice of a cutlure you do not belong to." What do you think, danny la rouge -- is this really what you think that those who are reflecting on the subjectivity of culture are saying is a necessary and universal consequence of that subjectivity? This seems to me to be as dangerously oversimplified as saying that the pamphlet's authors believe their own set of morals and ethics to be universals against which all other cultures are to be judged, to the extent that any alien traditions are evil. I won't belabour this point as it isn't really my main issue, but I don't think such caricature of opposing views ends up helping the argument being made.
Secondly, the misunderstanding of culture. This whole section on "culture as identity" only deals with cross-cultural conceptualisations (and then only at a surface level). This is a conceptualisation that takes the individual as an atomised unit that is immersed in a culture that becomes overlaid, like clothing. It approaches the human as having universal attributes and culture as something that merely expresses this universalism in different ways. However, I do not subscribe to this concept either of humans or of how the entire subjective sense of reality (or the individual's ontology, if I want to use the ten dollar words) is mediated through culture. I prefer a Vyrgotskian perspective that development only takes place through the use of cultural tools, with subsequent impact on the very conceptualisations of the self, of society, of, well, everything. The positivist, universalist perspective centred on in pp.8-10 feels like one expressed by those who have not really engaged with the subject.
Anyway, I don't think any of this massively impacts the rest of the pamphlet, and certainly not the important points it makes. I just kind of wish that it had been left out.
What do you think? Of course I talk about the bit I'm less keen on.
The two pages in question are those on "cultural relativism". My issues on this are that firstly, I think it portrays a caricature, which it then attacks as a strawman. And secondly, I think that even on its own terms, even ignoring this caricature, it misunderstands (or at leasts fails to engage with) the complexity of how culture mediates thought.
So, the caricature. The argument is that those who engage in identity politics are somehow giving a free pass to other cultures. Furthermore, they are actually attacking those who do not. The claim on p.9 is, "One of the main problems with cultural relativism is that no one is allowed to criticise another culture because if right and wrong are relative... there is no objective way of assessing any idea of practice of a cutlure you do not belong to." What do you think, danny la rouge -- is this really what you think that those who are reflecting on the subjectivity of culture are saying is a necessary and universal consequence of that subjectivity? This seems to me to be as dangerously oversimplified as saying that the pamphlet's authors believe their own set of morals and ethics to be universals against which all other cultures are to be judged, to the extent that any alien traditions are evil. I won't belabour this point as it isn't really my main issue, but I don't think such caricature of opposing views ends up helping the argument being made.
Secondly, the misunderstanding of culture. This whole section on "culture as identity" only deals with cross-cultural conceptualisations (and then only at a surface level). This is a conceptualisation that takes the individual as an atomised unit that is immersed in a culture that becomes overlaid, like clothing. It approaches the human as having universal attributes and culture as something that merely expresses this universalism in different ways. However, I do not subscribe to this concept either of humans or of how the entire subjective sense of reality (or the individual's ontology, if I want to use the ten dollar words) is mediated through culture. I prefer a Vyrgotskian perspective that development only takes place through the use of cultural tools, with subsequent impact on the very conceptualisations of the self, of society, of, well, everything. The positivist, universalist perspective centred on in pp.8-10 feels like one expressed by those who have not really engaged with the subject.
Anyway, I don't think any of this massively impacts the rest of the pamphlet, and certainly not the important points it makes. I just kind of wish that it had been left out.
danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
The discussion around the examples on those pages (FGM and the Pascoe Jamilmira case ) is a vital part of the pamphlet and needed to be expressed.
"A Northern Territory judge ruled in October that a 15-year-old Aboriginal girl “knew what was expected of her” and “didn’t need protection” when a 50-year-old man committed statutory rape against the girl and shot a gun into the air when she complained about it. [...]. Expert testimony submitted by an anthropologist in the case called the man’s arrangement with the girl “traditional” and therefore “morally correct.”"
We need to counter the thinking behind both that judgement and the anthropologist's expert testimony. If we hadn't, the pamphlet would have been lacking.
But you’re arguing a general case — and making some highly contestable claims to do it — and then trying to evidence that general argument based on specific examples. The fact that those specific examples are easy to agree on neither shows the reality of the strawman that has been claimed nor does it engage with the sociocultural reality of how the artefacts, traditions, processes, rituals and language of a culture determine the very subjective reality experienced by an individual.
danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
I'm sorry you think it's a strawman. That you do demonstrates how far apart our thinking is on this, so on this aspect I doubt we'll get any closer through discussion. Thanks for the feedback though.
Well I would describe myself as a cultural relativist, in that I take a Vyrgotskian view of development as being mediated through culture (and I’ll post more on that later to demonstrate how deeply culture affects the very neurology of the brain), meaning that subjective reality can only ever be situated within that cultural upbringing. However, I wouldn’t describe myself as having really any of the moral relativist positions you ascribe to cultural relativism. Not least because part of cultural relativism is reflecting on your own cultural priorities, and being able to apply them to your own subjective reality just as much as vice versa. This means that I can take moral positions based on my own cultural imperatives. I’m just not claiming that these are essential or universal, rather than axiomatic. That’s why your claim about cultural relativism is a strawman
Steel Icarus
we move
Just a small point - and I'm not attempting to be a cock, my intentions are good - but I assume you're talking about Vygotsky, he of zone of proximal development fame, not Vrygotsky, who Google hasn't heard of
This might help place some concrete meaning on the idea of culture not being some cloak we wear, though which universal attributes apply, but rather being the way in which our subjective reality develops.
Luria was a long-time collaborator of Vyrgotsky, and almost unique in the psy-disciplines of his marrying of neuroscience with detailed case studies and embedding it all in its sociocultural context. In the early 1930s, he travelled to the Asian part of Rusia to investigate the Uzbekistani tribes. These tribes still operated largely in a Feudal way, although the state capitalism of Bolshevism and Stalinism was beginning to make its presence felt. One thing Luria did was present the tribesmen with the kind of straightforward syllogism that are so second nature to anybody who developed within a market economy that we don't even understand why there is a question to be answered. For example, he asked them things like
"In the Far North, where there is snow, all bears are white. Novaya Zemlya is in the Far North. What colour bears are there?"
Subjects referred exclusively to their personal experience, failed to accept the premises as universals, but as particular statements to be judged in terms of experience, and failed to construct logical links between the premises. They might respond, "I've never been in the north and never seen bears," or "There are different kinds of bears. If one is born red, he will stay that way." Luria concluded that the processes of abstraction and generalization are not invariant at all stages of socioeconomic and cultural development. Rather, such processes are themselves products of the cultural environment.
I hope the point is clear. Culture isn't just different types of clothes worn by people who nevertheless all think the same way. It changes the very way that you think -- the way you experience the world..
Luria was a long-time collaborator of Vyrgotsky, and almost unique in the psy-disciplines of his marrying of neuroscience with detailed case studies and embedding it all in its sociocultural context. In the early 1930s, he travelled to the Asian part of Rusia to investigate the Uzbekistani tribes. These tribes still operated largely in a Feudal way, although the state capitalism of Bolshevism and Stalinism was beginning to make its presence felt. One thing Luria did was present the tribesmen with the kind of straightforward syllogism that are so second nature to anybody who developed within a market economy that we don't even understand why there is a question to be answered. For example, he asked them things like
"In the Far North, where there is snow, all bears are white. Novaya Zemlya is in the Far North. What colour bears are there?"
Subjects referred exclusively to their personal experience, failed to accept the premises as universals, but as particular statements to be judged in terms of experience, and failed to construct logical links between the premises. They might respond, "I've never been in the north and never seen bears," or "There are different kinds of bears. If one is born red, he will stay that way." Luria concluded that the processes of abstraction and generalization are not invariant at all stages of socioeconomic and cultural development. Rather, such processes are themselves products of the cultural environment.
I hope the point is clear. Culture isn't just different types of clothes worn by people who nevertheless all think the same way. It changes the very way that you think -- the way you experience the world..
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
Well, the titles turn out not to be the worst thing about the pamphlet, but..... it really isn't very good at all.
Three minor points:
Forced justification looks shit. It's just big blocks of text without a break. White space is your friend and makes things much more user friendly.
"if you identify as a jazz-fan, then you are not a jazz-hater." - this is not true. It is perfectly possible to be both at once, colloquially having a love/hate relationship with something is not merely possible, it is a common occurrence. Within formal logic 'fan' and 'hater' are not contradictory. So identifying with one thing does not automatically mean you cannot identify as something else.
"For example, in the trade union movement, thirty or forty years ago, there were very few women or Black activists, and the workplace and social issues important to them largely went ignored." I think the author has forgotten how old they are, cos thirty to forty years ago was the eighties, when the countries biggest union was led by a black man, where black groups were being set up throughout all unions and forcing their way onto the agenda. It was probably the highpoint of the black power movement in this country. There was a woman leading one of the male 'bastions' in the print. Gay rights issues were massive (and we all remember the miners' role in that).
The more important points:
There is far far too much generalisation and claims made without any supporting evidence. Who are the essentialists that are, apparently, everywhere? If 'It has become common to see the formulation....' why cannot you quote an example of someone using the formulation? These become strawmen and paper tigers. Who actually opposes opposing FGM, other than practitioners? There have been a small number of cases where someone has tried to overturn laws banning it on grounds of religious freedom, but none of them won on those grounds (the US did overturn the law, but because they only thought it was a mater for individual states, not the federal government.) It's an argument against something that isn't happening, there are no significant groups, states or even individuals arguing for such a thing. You only quote a single case from halfway around the world two decades ago. And whilst that is bad, it clearly is an exception rather than the norm and so is a bad point to generalise from.
More importantly, it completely and utterly fails to draw a proper distinction between groups practising 'identity politics' and one that are the acceptable 'autonomous organisation of [oppressed group].' It just isn't there. Women's groups in the unions were apparently autonomous when they were set up, but now the ones that exist are central to the machine. Often with the very same people. Is this a problem of 'identity politics,' 'autonomous groups' or is it about reformism? Why does BLM not gain the honour of being an 'autonomous group?' It is set up and run by black people, on their own terms, so why exclude it? Considering this is the one and only current IP issue that is directly discussed, it is a massive omission. The brief sections on it are appalling.
The Black Lives Matter protests involve all sorts of people with very different politics, and while some called to defund the police, others called for parity by employing more Black police.
This is true too of the white people who paraded their shame at their privilege at Black Lives Matter demonstrations in the summer of 2020, lining up to cry on podiums in parks across the world.
If that is all you actually noticed of the BLM demos then you weren't paying any attention. I attended several and watched many more online, and normally there weren't any white people on the platform at all. I certainly never once saw people 'lining up to cry on podiums' and, frankly, I don't think it ever happened. Even if it did, why only pick that out, rather than the many more calls for an end to all police harassment an end to substandard housing, the ones that explicitly called for opposition to the police & sentencing bill. Or even mention that statue that went for a swim. They are all far more typical of BLM activities than some white liberal.
Finally, there is that funny old falsehood derived from Malik.
Giving social groups essential characteristics implies that individuals from oppressed groups are inherently better than those from other groups.
But this is just bollocks. I do not know anyone in any 'idpol' group who would agree with it, most would laugh at you for saying it. Trans people don't think they're better than cis people, (most) Scottish nationalists dont think they're better than the English. They just want a seat at the table/to be able to go to work, or home at night, without harassment. They want the same rights as the rest of us and they want autonomy. Fair fucking play. Some of the TERFy groups probably do still have a bit of the seventies 'boys and their toys' / 'women would run the world much better' stuff, but they are absent from this piece and are the exception.
The pamphlet doesn't really have a critique of what Identity Politics actually is, it has points of criticism for what it could be. Any single issue campaign can be approached in a radical/revolutionary way, or a liberal/reformist way. The movements themselves are not inherently one or the other and where they end up depends upon who works with them and how. The job for radicals/revolutionaries is, surely, to argue for the radical approach in every circumstance, to put the movement to the left and say 'defund the police' not employ more black cops. Otherwise you are just leaving those movements to the careerists and reformists (which creates a nice fait accompli, 'look, i told you it would end up rubbish'). And every movement contains all kinds of seeds in it, dismissing all of 'identity politics' because of a few cherry picked examples is like dismissing the entirety of anarchism cos Stirner is a load of wank, or because it sometimes descends into vague soggy liberalism.
Three minor points:
Forced justification looks shit. It's just big blocks of text without a break. White space is your friend and makes things much more user friendly.
"if you identify as a jazz-fan, then you are not a jazz-hater." - this is not true. It is perfectly possible to be both at once, colloquially having a love/hate relationship with something is not merely possible, it is a common occurrence. Within formal logic 'fan' and 'hater' are not contradictory. So identifying with one thing does not automatically mean you cannot identify as something else.
"For example, in the trade union movement, thirty or forty years ago, there were very few women or Black activists, and the workplace and social issues important to them largely went ignored." I think the author has forgotten how old they are, cos thirty to forty years ago was the eighties, when the countries biggest union was led by a black man, where black groups were being set up throughout all unions and forcing their way onto the agenda. It was probably the highpoint of the black power movement in this country. There was a woman leading one of the male 'bastions' in the print. Gay rights issues were massive (and we all remember the miners' role in that).
The more important points:
There is far far too much generalisation and claims made without any supporting evidence. Who are the essentialists that are, apparently, everywhere? If 'It has become common to see the formulation....' why cannot you quote an example of someone using the formulation? These become strawmen and paper tigers. Who actually opposes opposing FGM, other than practitioners? There have been a small number of cases where someone has tried to overturn laws banning it on grounds of religious freedom, but none of them won on those grounds (the US did overturn the law, but because they only thought it was a mater for individual states, not the federal government.) It's an argument against something that isn't happening, there are no significant groups, states or even individuals arguing for such a thing. You only quote a single case from halfway around the world two decades ago. And whilst that is bad, it clearly is an exception rather than the norm and so is a bad point to generalise from.
More importantly, it completely and utterly fails to draw a proper distinction between groups practising 'identity politics' and one that are the acceptable 'autonomous organisation of [oppressed group].' It just isn't there. Women's groups in the unions were apparently autonomous when they were set up, but now the ones that exist are central to the machine. Often with the very same people. Is this a problem of 'identity politics,' 'autonomous groups' or is it about reformism? Why does BLM not gain the honour of being an 'autonomous group?' It is set up and run by black people, on their own terms, so why exclude it? Considering this is the one and only current IP issue that is directly discussed, it is a massive omission. The brief sections on it are appalling.
The Black Lives Matter protests involve all sorts of people with very different politics, and while some called to defund the police, others called for parity by employing more Black police.
This is true too of the white people who paraded their shame at their privilege at Black Lives Matter demonstrations in the summer of 2020, lining up to cry on podiums in parks across the world.
If that is all you actually noticed of the BLM demos then you weren't paying any attention. I attended several and watched many more online, and normally there weren't any white people on the platform at all. I certainly never once saw people 'lining up to cry on podiums' and, frankly, I don't think it ever happened. Even if it did, why only pick that out, rather than the many more calls for an end to all police harassment an end to substandard housing, the ones that explicitly called for opposition to the police & sentencing bill. Or even mention that statue that went for a swim. They are all far more typical of BLM activities than some white liberal.
Finally, there is that funny old falsehood derived from Malik.
Giving social groups essential characteristics implies that individuals from oppressed groups are inherently better than those from other groups.
But this is just bollocks. I do not know anyone in any 'idpol' group who would agree with it, most would laugh at you for saying it. Trans people don't think they're better than cis people, (most) Scottish nationalists dont think they're better than the English. They just want a seat at the table/to be able to go to work, or home at night, without harassment. They want the same rights as the rest of us and they want autonomy. Fair fucking play. Some of the TERFy groups probably do still have a bit of the seventies 'boys and their toys' / 'women would run the world much better' stuff, but they are absent from this piece and are the exception.
The pamphlet doesn't really have a critique of what Identity Politics actually is, it has points of criticism for what it could be. Any single issue campaign can be approached in a radical/revolutionary way, or a liberal/reformist way. The movements themselves are not inherently one or the other and where they end up depends upon who works with them and how. The job for radicals/revolutionaries is, surely, to argue for the radical approach in every circumstance, to put the movement to the left and say 'defund the police' not employ more black cops. Otherwise you are just leaving those movements to the careerists and reformists (which creates a nice fait accompli, 'look, i told you it would end up rubbish'). And every movement contains all kinds of seeds in it, dismissing all of 'identity politics' because of a few cherry picked examples is like dismissing the entirety of anarchism cos Stirner is a load of wank, or because it sometimes descends into vague soggy liberalism.
Kevbad the Bad
Amiable Bowel Syndrome
I don't know the first thing about Luria or Vyrgotsky, so I might well be doing them an injustice. But you have to be really careful with Soviet studies of anything. Everything was seen through the lens of ideology. Whilst the Bolsheviks claimed to be in favour of a union of peoples, this vision was always contradictory, hypocritical and partial. Non-Russians were second class in practice, a relic of the Russian empire which the Bolsheviks inherited. Muslim, Buddhist and shamanic cultures were deemed backward by comparison with the now Marxist Russian state. Peasants were also backward, lagging behind their proletarian cousins. Nomadic, semi-nomadic, Hunter-gatherer, pastoralist cultures were even more primitive. Their more advanced Russian brothers would guide them towards a socialist future in a friendly, paternalistic and patronising way.
When Russian researchers went out to the wilds of Central Asia to interview illiterate Uzbeks they took their derogatory assumptions with them. Someone else would have had to translate, with all the potential misunderstandings that can generate. Asking theoretical questions of people who may never have seen photographs, certainly never saw TV programs or films, were illiterate and uneducated, would have been unconcerned about the end results of the interviews and who may even have been taking the piss, was nothing like the scientific enterprise it pretended to be.
Like I say, I may be doing these geezers a disservice, but I wouldn't trust the results of cultural investigations coming out of 1930's Stalinist Russia one little bit.
Raheem
Well-Known Member
I think this case is a little misrepresented and miscast. There's no denying it's a depressing case, but I don't see it as being about a bunch of tofu-munching do-gooders rewriting the law out of respect for aboriginal cultural practices. It is, rather, about something older: the unaddressed legacy of a legal apartheid in Australia, never properly formalised or reformed. Although things might have changed since this case, there has been a laissez-faire approach to policing aboriginal communities which predates any particular date of origin that might be proposed for "identity politics". The problem that arises is really that of prosecuting one individual for behaviour which is generally tolerated not just within his community, but also by wider Australian society by dint of not giving a fuck what those people get up to.
Incidentally, it doesn't seem fair to say that anybody involved in the case made the judgement that "traditional" = "morally correct". The full quote for the anthropologist who testified for the defence is:
The enjoining of sexual relations between a significantly older man and his promised wife (often under the age of 16) or, indeed, between such a man and any socially legitimated post-menarche (i.e. after first menstruation) female spouse, is not considered aberrant in Burarra society. Rather, it is the cultural ideal, sanctioned and underpinned by a complex system of customary law and practice.That such behaviour may be at variance with contemporary Western sensibilities, mores and laws… in no way diminishes the fact that it is regarded as entirely appropriate- indeed, morally correct- conduct within the traditional parameters of the Burarra life-world.
I can't see that there's anything obviously wrong with this statement, or with the defence using it in evidence.
I think this is an area where it might have helped you to know a little bit about Vygotsky and Luria. Vygotsky’s work was specifically informed directly by Marx and remained at odds with Bolshevism. In fact, one reason his work ended up relatively buried for 40 years (he died in 1934 and remained relatively obscure until being rediscovered in the 1970s) is that it didn’t fit with Bolshevik ideology.
Meanwhile, Luria got heavily in trouble with the Soviet authorities for his Uzbekistan work, because, again, it ran counter to Soviet ideology. Amongst other things, his findings showed that there was no reason to have derogatory views of ethnic groups; there was no essential underpinning to any form of racism.
The fact that both Vygotsky and Luria managed to produce such original and extraordinary insights into the way culture impacts development, subjectivity, learning and cognition in spite of and in the face of hostile Stalinism is reason to be even more impressed by what they produced.
Of course, all work is heavily influenced by its ideological underpinnings. That’s kind of the whole point of what I’m saying. That’s precisely why you need to understand and lay bare what it is that the research relies on, in terms of its theories both of the nature of reality and the nature of knowledge. And those ideological influences include the influences on all work on and understandings of culture created from within the capitalist and individualist ideologies of the west. The cross-cultural assumptions relied on to produce the section on cultural relativism within this pamphlet are not explicitly acknowledged. However, they are, ironically, underpinned by the ideologies of western market capitalism. They are based on an essentialist ontology of the self as having universal, atomised attributes, and culture just beings overlaid on top as the way these attributes are expressed.
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hitmouse
so defeated, thinks it's funny
Will have to get round to ordering the pamphlet and giving it a proper read at some point, but if that is the level at which BLM's discussed then it does sound like a pretty poor critique. ETA: and also seems kind of at odds with the stuff that the ACG was actually publishing last summer, like All around the world the police are our enemy - Anarchist Communist Group
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