Re: gender: Judith Butler's pseudo materialism and culturalfeminism. (f

At 1:43 PM +0800 20/3/00, Doug Henwood wrote:
>md7148@cnsvax.albany.edu wrote:
>
>>it is not *simply* a discourse.
>
>What's so simple about a discourse?

indeed. as this and associated threads shd amply document.

>By the way, a point of the Butler passage was that things deemed
>"biological" are often socially constructed - and that recourse to
>"biological" explanations should always be suspect - which is
>something I'd have thought you'd approve of, but since it comes from
>her, I guess it's evil.

isn't there slippage here? if "the recourse to 'biological'
explanations should _always_ be suspect" (emph. added), then the same
should apply to 'physical', 'chemical', and with even greater force
to 'economic', 'sociological', 'anthropological', etc. explanations.

there's the "biological" and the "biological", the former as
non-socially created reality, the latter as a social construct of
that reality. then, there's the "sociological" which would pretend to
be "biological" -- i suggest the warning signal should be the use of
anthropomorphisms in such allegedly "biological" explanations. there
may well be other senses of the "biological"...

the second "biological" does have the merit of being subject to the
constrain of a non-socially created reality -- the ancients at least
had the wisdom to believe that all of that reality is the creation of
the gods, and that we humans are not creatures of a greater god -- as
a disciplining force, if 'truth' in any of its possible senses is the
objective. for the simple reason that the biological does not depend
for its operation on our constructions of it; it goes its merry way.

in contrast, "economics" is doubly a social construct; and if you've
got enough people believing in the second order construct, the first
order construct can keep going for quite a while -- i'd think the
current madness on wall street should be sufficient proof of that,
as, to some degree, the asian financial crisis.

ps: doug, any further thoughts on the asian financial crisis?

khoo kj