Re: gender: Judith Butler's pseudo materialism and cultural feminism.(fw

On Mon, 20 Mar 2000 md7148@cnsvax.albany.edu wrote:

> narratives such as feminism and marxism. That is why post-modernists are
> mad at the words "emancipation" "equality" "socialism". They think they
> are over-extension of power relations.  hence, according to them, we are
> trapped in power. My critique of her is that is if were are trapped in
> power and can not change power relations, there is no point in arguing
> that "gender is a social construct"

Everyone is trapped in power-relations; that doesn't mean they're eternal,
only that they can seem that way. Butler is saying that social constructs
do indeed have astonishing power over us, but not in the ways that we
think they do: constructs aren't this simple statement, ideology or
belief-system which you can shut off like a faucet. They're complex
ecologies of power-relations, cultural discourses, the innervated weight
of lived history, etc. Saying "Down With White Male Hetero Pig Bourgies"
is good for the soul, but that in itself isn't going to bother Bill Gates
(net wealth $80 billion and counting) one bit; you have to transform all
those relations, i.e. take on the concrete power of the Microsoft
Corporation. 

> See for this Gayatri Spivak's critique of Butler. 

Where is this published?

-- Dennis