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#3
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re: the skepticism towards the idea that "intent doesn't matter"

i've been really confused about this, why is the assertion that "intent doesn't matter" under question at all? of course it doesn't matter, it's insane to suggest it does, that's the height of bourgeois idealism! if your ideas or intentions do not manifest themselves behaviorally, if your ideology does not carry consequence in the complex of material relations, then it's irrelevant - are we meant to assume that someone is an ally of the people because of their innate species-being? that's vile, how can anyone take that seriously, that's the absurd essentialism of bourgeois worms. in 'the ideology of modernism', lukacs identifies the way the petit-bourgeois authors confuse their material reality with the various subjective potential realities of their minds - and fall into insufferable malaise when it dawns that our material complexes fail to manifest these potentialities. i think that's completely accurate, that's the decrepit ideology of childish idealist, and that's articulated whenever the importance of intent becomes primary.

of course i don't agree with the juvenile identity politics screaming that every revolutionary fall under its criteria, but i don't understand at all why you would not attack this because of the extreme vulgarity, but instead because they don't pay heed to delusional intent. if your attitudes do not manifest themselves in a form materially qualifiable then they are of no consequence and at a very basic level do not matter in any way, why is this even called into question, maybe i am just understanding this entire line of thought in completely the wrong way, idk, idk
#4
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an enemy of the people is still an enemy of the people, no matter what convoluted games they play in their head to assure themselves that what they are doing is for the good of the masses
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you're trying to understand the statement removed from the context of textual interpretation. in the dialectic framework of forums, which is what we're concerned with here, "intent doesn't matter" means that there's just one way for something to be read: from the subjective perspective of the person with the least privilege, the most oppressed cred, who reads a joke/statement and is offended by it. and it doesn't matter with what purpose the text was crafted with, the variety of other meanings contained within it, whether that subjectivity is imbuing an offensive meaning onto it in a purely self-reflexive way, it only matters if someone with the proper identity interprets it to be privileged/offensive and how dare you question their own interpretation without the same background and don't even try to engage in a discourse to resolve the contradiction.

it's a vulgar trap, and ignores the complexity of thought. obviously in praxis, action matters more than idealist intent. but things are far more murky in the linguistic/semiotic level where speech can be interpreted in multiple ways.

Edited by aerdil ()

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#8
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yeah i should clarify that i'm also not saying the person's intent is the only valid interpretation, just that there are many, some more valid and others, and it requires a dialectical discussion to get at the truth/meaning of a statement rather than having one unquestionable person declared as the most relevant interpreter of meaning entirely due to their personal identity. of course in certain circumstances that person very well may have a legitimate criticism and the most valid interpretation, but in those cases there will be more to the debate than just their identity.

Edited by aerdil ()

#9
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but aerdil, struggle is on every front, that means the realm of the semiotic superstructure as much as it means the different modalities of the means of production

maybe this is the point where i differ from others, but i really dont know why this would be, but an understanding of privilege is a fundamental aspect of any attempt at a progressive textual analysis. whether you like it or not, speech is the primary form by which which our relationships and individual consciousnesses are structured. when you make a joke, or whatever, that does have material effects to the extent that it contributes to the structuring of identities and their behavioral practices. if the subaltern, or the proletariat, the revolutionary subject, is detrimentally effected (and they are the only arbiters of this perception) by these semiotic constructions then your semiotic constructions have been weaponized against the people, regardless of your intentions.

i disagree with you completely that "intent doesn't matter" ignores the variety of meaning contained within a semiotic construction, these are completely different concepts. it is that ignorant and uncritical approach to the variety of meanings that i draw my opposition to the identity politics, it ignores a genuine and progressive (which i think requires sophistication) approach to intersectionality, instead simply relying on a kneejerk accusation of misogyny, or whatever. but when what you are saying is a weapon towards the revolutionary subject, to sit back like hey, this is just a joke - that is disingenuous, useless, and cruel.

discipline posted:
haha listen here kiddo, if we want to talk about enemies of the people then we're actually fish food and have no business doing anything but getting jobs in finance


sure, but at least this is an honest life - i oppose pretending you are a revolutionary when in practice you are a running dog, something i and everyone else here is guilty of, i'm not delusional, but we can't fool ourselves here that anything else is the truth

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discipline posted:

discipline posted:
I don't have a problem and indeed I support fighting racism, homophobia, sexism, etc, but I think it is something that comes in conjunction with struggle, not something that you must lay down before struggle.

and I'll also add it is not the main struggle, as I see contemporary racism, homophobia, sexism, etc as being mainly (a) systemic and (b) propagated by a system (late Capitalism?) that should be the target. otherwise you're fighting a hydra and misappropriating resources and energy.


discipline i agree completely with both these points, we are one the same page politically, completely. i am simply saying that the bankrupt ideology of safe spaces and reform before struggle is on account an extreme and selfdestructive vulgarity, not because of some failure to meet an insane idealist criteria. you say activists should take into consideration that people desire to affect change - what does this matter, beyond a vaguely opportune site for recruiting? i am not a sociopath that doubts the goodness and honesty in people, i think to a strong degree the vast majority of people desire to affect positive change in their society - i just don't think that's nearly enough, we need the courage to manifest these intentions behaviorally more than anything else

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discipline posted:
but I don't understand where you're going with this. if you want to subject yourself to The People and lead a life of atonement through hard labor that seems a serious waste of resources and talent at this point in the struggle. which is my point, and to some extent the author's as well. we should be pooling resources, not sitting around engaged in self criticism and excusing ourselves from struggle because we were born this way baby


that comment was mostly selfdeprecating, not entirely serious, but i do fundamentally believe what is required as an activist is a subjection to The People - but accumulating resources and talent is the fundamental aspect of this process. we aren't at any point of disagreement in terms of political praxis, as far as i can tell

#14
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intent clearly doesn't matter in its material consequences, but it should, i hope, inform how we react to people's behavior. in fact it would be more or less impossible to live in society, or live at all, without relying on determinations of intent.
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but a person of colour has no obligation whatsoever to excuse the behavior of a white person who calls them a nigger in jest because it is not of ill intention, and by not applying this critique to the macro-level of social relations for the sake of pragmatism you are excusing these practices, i really don't see any way around that. it is reaction of the highest extreme to deny the subaltern of the right to draw that line of acceptability
#16
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and this is no excuse of oppression olympics, that vulgar quantifiability is beyond justifiability, and we should be extremely skeptical of anyone who jumps quickly to adopt the identification as the subaltern, rather we have the responsibility to approach these issues with serious and honest inquiry. Unity-Criticism-Unity
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#18
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discipline posted:
but my point is that it does not necessarily have to be a person of color speaking from their lived experience who is the one to call out a white person slanging slurs, that rooting things in essentialism can be bad right guys!


sure, okay, that's a totally fair point. but what i am also saying is that it's disingenuous for a person who benefits from the contextually dependent privilege in whatever situation to be the one who determines where the line of social acceptability is drawn, out of good intentions. if the p.o.c., female, or indigenous base who take part in whatever activism you belong to take issue with the practical operations of your movement i think this is extremely important and needs to be approached with honest self-critique

#19
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i think it's important that thuglessons used the qualifier that intent should at least "inform" how we react to people's behavior. that doesn't mean it absolves them of that behavior or that it even necessarily has any relevance depending on the circumstances.

context is still important for example. in your hypothetical of a white person calling a person of color a nigger as a "joke," the historical background of that action is far more relevant than the white person's supposed intent. and that intent isn't necessarily fully conscious: considering that the person is immersed in a culture where that term has a very explicit signified, the intent was cruel and ignorant regardless of how the white person tries to justify it.
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#21
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to me, the basic assertion we need to orient political engagement towards is the identification of the 'part of no part' as the revolutionary subject, and as such activism needs to be subjectified to this base. ignoring any aspect of the superstructure and the semiotic field is a subscription to vulgar materialism and fails at the same points as shallow identity politics
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discipline posted:
yes but a problem emerges when you get herman cain and sarah palin saying it's ok to stuff black men in prison and make teen rape victims carry babies to term right? I mean this is precisely why these individuals (among others COUGH COUGH) are utilized by racist patriarchy in the first place. we have to be more methodological in our approach and not leave everything up to lived subjectivity


but if you subscribe to an honest intersectionality, where race and gender are on equal footing with class analysis, i think it's totally disingenuous to include someone like sarah palin or herman cain as any part of the revolutionary subject

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aerdil posted:
i think it's important that thuglessons used the qualifier that intent should at least "inform" how we react to people's behavior. that doesn't mean it absolves them of that behavior or that it even necessarily has any relevance depending on the circumstances.

context is still important for example. in your hypothetical of a white person calling a person of color a nigger as a "joke," the historical background of that action is far more relevant than the white person's supposed intent. and that intent isn't necessarily fully conscious: considering that the person is immersed in a culture where that term has a very explicit signified, the intent was cruel and ignorant regardless of how the white person tries to justify it.


i think i misrepresented myself with that example, i'm sorry for that. of course i understand that language comes with a vast myriad of specific contingencies - if you remember in the hiphop thread once i argued against the dismissal of half-vietnamese rapper v-nasty for using that word, when she is an active and contributing member of a majority black locality and social community. our point of disagreement is that i don't think intention has a place in this myriad, for the reasons i've expressed above, and should only be included as part of a social etiquette and kindness that lessons describes (but this should be dropped at any time per the demands of the people)

#24
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the problem i have with such shallow politics, that i think everyone here shares, is that they do not subscribe to an honest intersectionality - even if you are a wealthy and participating member of a core state, by virtue of simply your gender and race you are suddenly and essentially the revolutionary subject and thus the arbiter of all social acceptability. intersectionality is no excuse to turn away from class analysis.

but i mean, these people don't have intentions that are any worse than yours, they are still ultimately working for social justice. this is my point, that if behaviorally you operate in a way that is self-destructive to yourself and whatever movement you're apart of, that intention is of no consequence
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blinkandwheeze posted:
and this is no excuse of oppression olympics, that vulgar quantifiability is beyond justifiability, and we should be extremely skeptical of anyone who jumps quickly to adopt the identification as the subaltern, rather we have the responsibility to approach these issues with serious and honest inquiry. Unity-Criticism-Unity



well, that sounds good enough, but my experience has been that people are absolutely incapable of achieving this on either end of the spectrum, which suggests to me that a new sort of praxis is necessary

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i mean to be completely clear, i agree wholeheartedly with the article in the op, discipline i agree completely with your political stances, i really can't see at all how you could interpret what i'm saying as taking part in the bizarre identity politics of lived subjectivity, if anything i am arguing from a position of naive maoism. i just think articulating these issues in terms of the importance of intention undermines the platform against these issues, by falling into the same trappings of the movement you're condemning - taking part in the idealism of the bourgeoisie. what is a consideration of intent but an undue focus on the politics of the individual?
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#28
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but i really do disagree with what aerdil is saying - which is that it is important to move beyond the conception of the individual subject as a primary aspect of the base structure, but that this is no longer necessary in the field of the semiotic constructions of superstructure, where a resort to the individualist politics of intention is acceptable. i think this is completely false, we need to remove the primacy of the individual subject (and with it the very ideology of the bourgeois) from every front, in favor of a rigorous structuralism and dialectical materialism

aerdil posted:
"intent doesn't matter" means that there's just one way for something to be read


honestly this is just stupid, there are so many ways to unpack a text, whether that's a post on a forum or not, without having to take part in a dichotomy of bourgeois individualism vs. oppression olympics. read a book, aerdil

Edited by blinkandwheeze ()

#29
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david foster wallace once said this and it is very applicable and apropos to this thread's discourse

Getting worked up over words is the sign of the utter degeneration and complete irrelevancy of the
western left—when the words are the issue, your privilege and your life are as good as they can possibly get.
#30
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blinkandwheeze posted:
i think this is completely false, we need to remove the primacy of the individual subject (and with it the very ideology of the bourgeois) from every front, in favor of a rigorous structuralism and dialectical materialism



what does this look like in terms of the day to day activities of an organisation

#31
Nippon
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Human males experience a post-ejaculatory refractory period after sex. They are temporarily incapable of engaging in sex with the same female after ejaculation and require time to recover full sexual function. In popular reference, the Coolidge effect is the well-documented phenomenon that the post-ejaculatory refractory period is reduced or eliminated if a novel female becomes available. This effect is cited by evolutionary biologists as one reason why males are more likely to desire sex with a greater number and variety of partners than females.
#32
Kurdt
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is a novel female like an amputee or a midget
#33
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shennong posted:

blinkandwheeze posted:
i think this is completely false, we need to remove the primacy of the individual subject (and with it the very ideology of the bourgeois) from every front, in favor of a rigorous structuralism and dialectical materialism

what does this look like in terms of the day to day activities of an organisation


here i'm going to be extremely vulgar, with all my ignorance of your discipline of study, and lift something you said totally out of context -

shennong posted:
like ideally i think the role of the agricultural scientist would be to describe what people are doing in a community and how its working (quantitatively and qualitatively depending on what outcomes the community cares about), disseminate that knowledge outside the community, take in knowledge from outside and test/adapt/develop methods for a particular locality. if we start from sound premises and good values in terms of our goals i think we can avoid most of the pitfalls associated with the privileging of quantitative interventional experimental paradigms



maybe i am crazy, but to translate this into political organization, with respect to the wide networks of resistance embedded in the wild contingencies of indigenous, decolonial struggles, maybe this is not a bad model.

#34
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blinkandwheeze posted:

shennong posted:

blinkandwheeze posted:
i think this is completely false, we need to remove the primacy of the individual subject (and with it the very ideology of the bourgeois) from every front, in favor of a rigorous structuralism and dialectical materialism

what does this look like in terms of the day to day activities of an organisation

here i'm going to be extremely vulgar, with all my ignorance of your discipline of study, and lift something you said totally out of context -

shennong posted:
like ideally i think the role of the agricultural scientist would be to describe what people are doing in a community and how its working (quantitatively and qualitatively depending on what outcomes the community cares about), disseminate that knowledge outside the community, take in knowledge from outside and test/adapt/develop methods for a particular locality. if we start from sound premises and good values in terms of our goals i think we can avoid most of the pitfalls associated with the privileging of quantitative interventional experimental paradigms



maybe i am crazy, but to translate this into political organization, with respect to the wide networks of resistance embedded in the wild contingencies of indigenous, decolonial struggles, maybe this is not a bad model.



hmm, i hadn't thought about it like that, but i agree iwth myself there, lol. so i guess if one of the outcomes we care about is avoiding replicating the systems of hierarchical domination in the hegemonic culture, we're faced with finding some way of describing the degree to which these kinds of relationships are present in the organisation that doesn't rely on the kind of individualist perspectivism that gives rise to privilege politics, right? that's an interesting problem that i have zero insight into

#35
Mike Nelson here.
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discipline posted:
we have to be more methodological in our approach and not leave everything up to lived subjectivity

#36
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My, you've lost weight.
#37
Mike Nelson here.
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i said this before but i think it is funny. i read this american anarchist guy's books about anarchist theory and such and he had this thing saying that all sorts of oppressions existed and had to be challenged but that class was at the centre. the upshot being that anarchists should consider themselves "class-struggle anarchists" and focus on working class issues rather than being like oh i'm gay so i spend most of my time fighting for gay rights or whatever. and my opinion was like umm well for starters, if class is in the centre, the centre of what?

anyway then i got this small book of shit by people who were members of an anarchist federation with him before it broke up and turned into various other projects. and i read that that group had been trying to work on privilege/oppression talk for a while and this had really angered that dude and his peeps. so basically he just tried to rework their arguments about how all these other oppressions mattered and then insisted class was at the centre like a crybaby.

another anarchist (murray bookchin) did somewhat similar thing which was really funny too. he wrote about how there were lifestyle anarchists and social anarchists. and basically he just projected every stupid thing he could imagine on a wide range of people he just didn't like that had almost no connection with each other and then was like umm you gotta be a socialist organizer like me. there's a book that tears apart bookchin that is mean and funny and it just takes quotes from when bookchin was young and then compares them to quotes in his book against lifestylism. so bookchin will be like "the hippie movement is the future because they reject conformity" in one and then when he's older he's like "we need to conform in order to get our ideas heard, anyone who thinks otherwise is a traitor to anarchism" or whatever.

good times.
#38
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I don't know if it really fits, but I'll bring it in here: The attitudes that irk me the most are those that are satisfied. For example, the individual who finds a tolerable job that supports his/her family and resolves themselves to a typical family life - never reading another book - never exploring another passion - never interacting with people on the other side of town. These "merican dream-havers -" are more cancerous than anyone else, because they make up the bulk of the fuel for the system itself. And these are the people who are held up as the pinnacle of life in the States by our rulers - the so called "working class," working hard every day to give their families a good life. They allow themselves to become satisfied and fear the loss of what they were so kindly granted by their benefactors. In essence, an entire class of house Negros. The intentions and attitude of this class, regardless of individual identity - is the backbone of capitalist society. It is the "good" excuse for keeping the whole thing going.

In summary:
Intent is meaningless without sincere self-critique down to the core of everyday life. Search tirelessly for wisdom or you will end up worse than dead.
#39
Goldgelbes Löwenäffchen
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getfiscal posted:
anarchism

#40
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blinkandwheeze posted:
but i really do disagree with what aerdil is saying - which is that it is important to move beyond the conception of the individual subject as a primary aspect of the base structure, but that this is no longer necessary in the field of the semiotic constructions of superstructure, where a resort to the individualist politics of intention is acceptable. i think this is completely false, we need to remove the primacy of the individual subject (and with it the very ideology of the bourgeois) from every front, in favor of a rigorous structuralism and dialectical materialism

aerdil posted:
"intent doesn't matter" means that there's just one way for something to be read


honestly this is just stupid, there are so many ways to unpack a text, whether that's a post on a forum or not, without having to take part in a dichotomy of bourgeois individualism vs. oppression olympics. read a book, aerdil



its pretty cool that you call me stupid using an out of context quote in the same sentence that you contradict yourself, fuck face. how does my literally saying that there's an incredibly wide range of ways to unpack a text as opposed to the favored method of interpretation by the folks we were discussing imply a strict dichotomy?

stop trying to be a teenaged lukács and read some marx or lacan, kid. taking into account individual human thought isn't strictly bourgeois unless it's given primacy, something i was never proposing was true within semiotics or the symbolic order, anyway. but eliminating it entirely as if it has no impact on the totality of social relations is goddamned silly, mate.