tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6058072377999486184.post8058279314383363806..comments2023-12-29T18:13:21.495-06:00Comments on pink scare: Incorporating Althusser's theory of ideology with contemporary feminismUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6058072377999486184.post-72046117602963934952009-02-09T18:54:00.000-06:002009-02-09T18:54:00.000-06:00A failure to fully understand what culture is. I l...A failure to fully understand what culture is. I like it. It's a different way of looking at what we both sense as a collective failure to fully make the sorts of critiques we need to be making if we want to reach something like Wendy Brown's idea of a critique of the state. <BR/><BR/>I like this approach especially because it, I think, takes us back to Althusser in a way. The state as the illusion of the private-public split, as you say. That's part of the ideology. Well, it seems to me, the misunderstanding about what culture is stems from a basic assumption that culture is in some ways a private production, unattached to public state apparatuses. If we think of it as a private production put about by some sexist execs somewhere, we don't HAVE to think of the material or historical origins of the artifact in the sense that Althusser wants us to. Rejecting liberal explanations of the status quo has to come before an adequate cultural critique or critiques that incorporate other ISAs.<BR/><BR/>I'm beginning to think my next read has to be Empire. My impression is that the deep layering (or net?) of power between public and private and government and business and culture and propaganda is one of the main themes there--the difficulty of distinguishing between each apparatus, and therefore, the difficulty of attacking any of them. How can you resist if you can't tell what you're resisting? Maybe that's why Wendy Brown's critique of the state seems so necessary and compelling, and yet vague and inadequate in terms of answering the question "so now what do we do?" It's so hard to identify what the state is, let alone how it manages to abuse us, let alone how we could possibly free ourselves from it.<BR/><BR/>Agh, discussions like this make me need a drink :)Arvillahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02966511261153415467noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6058072377999486184.post-48367191134000585962009-02-09T18:06:00.000-06:002009-02-09T18:06:00.000-06:00Interesting post, Arvilla. Its got me thinking... ...Interesting post, Arvilla. Its got me thinking... while the over-emphasis on culture that you're in some sense critiquing does seem to leave out other institutions from their scrutiny, doesn't this also speak to a sense in which these culture-over-emphasizers are actually working with an impoverished understanding of culture? Their critiques of the formal aspects of some cultural artifacts are in many cases very adept and critically powerful, but it seems that they are working with a reified understanding of those very artifacts (that is, one that is shorn of the structural, historical, and also economic forces at work in both their production and mode of presentation). In short, they seem to fail to see culture as part of a larger complex network in which multinational capitalism is tied up in this strange costellation of other social institutions and norms (e.g. gender). <BR/><BR/>I tend to agree with you about the liberal tendency to, in general, refuse the state as a means to change, but I suppose I wonder to what extent the State can be efficacious. I agree that it shouldn't be abjured as a vehicle to fight oppression, but it also seems that any serious mode of liberation would have to go far beyond the state as well (maybe this is where Wendy Brown comes into it, in that she seems to want to offer a really interesting critique of the state). Incidentally, I'd like to hear more about how Wendy Brown might fit into this critique of other ISAs. <BR/><BR/>This post has got me thinking...thttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05268192967377248928noreply@blogger.com