Feminist Theory Supplemental Questions–Black Feminism & Neoliberalism
These are supplemental questions regarding Stephen Dillon’s “Possessed By Death.” Members of my feminist theory seminar ought to discuss them below in the comments.
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Dillon argues that “antiblack technologies…live on in the operation of the market” (114). How do antiblack technologies/ideals/strategies manifest as operations of the neoliberal/deregulated market? As operations of big data?
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In what ways does white feminism present itself as a front for neoliberal capitalism? And what are the anti-black implications/foundations of that?
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Dillon argues that “for the slave, economic rationality possessed every moment of life’s terror and death’s release. Liberal distinctions between the public and the private, and the economic, political, and social were fabrications for the slave, illusions that depended on their erasure from the realm of the human…This process is the unthought genealogy of neoliberalism’s biopolitics and its commodification of life” (119). If neoliberalism is an “economic rationality” that understands everything in terms of entrepreneurship and a deregulated market (cf Foucault BoB), to what extent can we see neoliberalism as extending its control of slaves to the general population? How does white supremacy work, then, if even whites are subject to the kind of economic rationality once reserved for black slaves?
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Feminists have talked about the role of “constitutive exclusion” in systems of oppression: the exclusion of a group constitutes the norm/privileged group as such (e.g., masculine is whatever is not feminine). Dillon suggests, however, a technique of “constitutively haunting…global capitalism. The imprisoned women of color compose the ‘detritus’ of neoliberalism–the human waste necessary to its success” (116). How is constitutive haunting different from constitutive exclusion? And how is this difference related to broader shifts to neoliberalism?
**Aside: These are my opinions based on my perspective of the readings (here, primarily of Dillon). I am not trying to force my perspective on anyone!
1. Short Answer- Could this point to discussion we had last week on the collection and processing of big data? I see a way of anti-black technologies working to serve neoliberal power structure in the explicit biases in policing and surveying technology (I suppose that would be a literal instantiation of it). I see anti-black technologies as neoliberal ideal, whenever I see white privileged people appropriating Blackness, and Black people celebrating it, much less, excusing it. It seems like the white supremacist power structure has perpetuated anti-black technologies for so long, there isn’t even a need for Black expression anymore (http://raprehab.com/notice-to-black-artists-your-services-are-no-longer-needed/) I know it’s satire, but it is still relevant.There’s a difference between admiration, understanding, and appropriating.
1-a.-short answer- White fem presents itself as handmaiden to neoliberal capitalism by explicitly performing neoliberal privilege and power. They are a monolith, they speak for all women (especially those who identify as feminist), and lest I not mention how they always seem to have figured things out completely?! If we just work hard enough, If we just stay determined, If we focus on the important things, like how to take the power back, and work on economic distribution (cause that is what every woman immediately needs) we can succeed.. Anti-Black technologies are definitely at the base of this discourse, as most of the founding of white fem ideals are in the face of Black/POC experience. Like Dillon says, there has to be a refuse upon which the powerful remain and retain their power.
1-b. -short answer- I find the neoliberal capitalistic power structure to be one that works insidiously. It’s ideals, it’s a mentality. We are slaves for white validation, even as POC activists, scholars, and artists. People will sell out. White supremacy works even still because the type of white supremacy we are talking about here isn’t one that solely seeks to subjugate those outside of white… In this structure, white supremacy is an amalgam of discriminations that is inclusive of all those who are not willingly (implicitly or otherwise) perpetuating and/or seeking out the commodified white ideal. Within this structure white privilege is white privilege, black privilege is white privilege, etc.
2. -short answer- I love this question. I think this points more clearly to the shift from traditional explicit discrimination to implicit and insidious perpetuation of white supremacy. So, after years of explicit discrimination and intersectional racism, this white supremacist ideal has become conditioned within this neoliberal frame, and we can clearly see it manifested within those prison walls. The WOC who got there were mostly convicted of petty charges, all of which these women saw as necessary to do in order to survive within this society, where there are no jobs (for them) and “welfare” was a bunch of bs.
-Bigger Pic Thought- We’ve talked about feminism having a negative connotation, right? I think discussion of this is more relevant this week than last. It seems like not-just-white feminism is being used to perpetuate neoliberal aims. With all the different types of feminisms being circulated and commodified, is it important to define our terms here? Why do we choose to keep identifying under a term with such an ambivalent past and present? Just as we discussed in brevity on my blog last week, perhaps feminist/feminism isn’t the right term here. Or, if it is, we REALLY need to collaborate to clearly understand to what we are identifying with and supporting! It’s especially important now that things are working primarily under the surface, with the traumatic/violent/negative outcomes being the things we all end up explicitly seeing…
“Just as we discussed in brevity on my blog…” I should have written SIMILARLY to what we discussed… We discussed if “disrupt/disruptive” was the term we were looking for, not feminist/feminism.
Hi DS–Thx for the thoughtful responses!
1. I think you’re on the right track here: how is anti-blackness coded into policing and surveillance tech? How are our implicit biases reinscribed in code, in engineering, etc?
1a: I wonder how the images of the “working-mom-has-it-all” and the “welfare queen” are tied together? Is Leaning In predicated on the constitution of a class of “undeserving” or “entitled” black women? I’m especially thinking of how these 2 images rose to popularity in the 90s…
2. your connection of haunting to implicit knowledge is really interesting. that would be a point worth developing futher.
Big pic: I really really like how you question the demand to return to “feminism” (is this the right term?). I wonder if there is a way to still keep the heat on patriarchy but yet have a more nuanced term. And also: what are these repeated demands to have us identify as feminists/claim feminism demanding us to perform? You KNOW I’m about as anti-patriarchy as it gets, but maybe there is something really feminist, in a deep sense, about rejecting the demand to be just ‘a feminist’? (and of course there’s the existentialist critique here, right, that any claim ‘to be’ a feminist is always bad faith, always inauthentic, etc.). Also, you use of the term ‘collaborate’ is interesting in light of ongoing class conversations about ‘solidarity’ and the like. I can collaborate with people I disagree with, don’t identify with, etc…This sounds like another idea worth thinking through more thoroughly.
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DS, I also really appreciated your comment about collaborating to understand what actual feminism is in order to see where it should go from here. It made me think about Ashley’s post and her discussion of qualifying what kind of feminist a person is. She made a really convincing argument that sometimes the qualifier helps because certain feminist ideals aren’t in agreement with others. Then again, if there was that true collaboration piece (like Dr. James said, you don’t necessarily even have to like someone to collaborate with them) maybe that need to qualify feminism would be gone and it could have a common agenda. Particularly because sometimes, like we discussed, labels regardless of their purpose, can ultimately detract from that purpose.
(http://raprehab.com/notice-to-black-artists-your-services-are-no-longer-needed/) I know it’s satire, but it is still relevant. There’s a difference between admiration, understanding, and appropriating. — Thank you for sharing this! Satire or not, I think there is much to be said here. Grammys 2014? I didn’t watch, but I have seen so many articles about the 2014 Grammy Awards in relation to this.
In my blog this week I tried to explain how I think there is a need for a type of universalism and solidarity. Dr. James asked me to further push my philosophical ideas. I am still working on that, but I think collaboration better describes the idea I had then solidarity. The feminism or solidarity I was trying to describe would be a collaboration of thoughts, experiences, and histories. I’m still not sure if collaboration would work in the context of my blog, but I like it better than solidarity. I agree there should be a collaborative rethinking of what it means to identify as a feminist, and what is the aim of claiming the identity.
The qualifiers we use can be very important and I liked what Ashley had to say. However, I think they can detract from the purpose. Even if a person has not shared in the same experiences as another it does not mean they cannot connect, or that they do not want to.