An obvious problem with the grievance aspect of identity politics is that the grievance needs to be perpetually maintained in order to justify the identity aspect of the politics. And in an era of academic specialization wherein just about every individual identity group has its own set of researchers and theoretical champions—as well as a widely accepted generic narrative of grievance—the observation that continued relevance (which translates into political power)
identity politics
October 2, 2005
Ends, means, the “progressive” left, and language (updated)
From Jonah Goldberg, writing in the Corner: Please read this post by Garance Franke-Ruta over at Tapped on what “movement-building” demands of liberal bloggers. It certainly reads to me like she’s upset that liberal bloggers are being too intellectually honest. The upshot of Franke-Ruta’s position seems to be that deliberately distorting Bill Bennett’s intent and meaning is a small price to pay to villify him unfairly and for the added
September 20, 2005
The swirly cone of Allah and the Flight 93 Memorial, redux
My earlier post on the real-world implications of linguistic notions of interpretation raised some interesting questions, which I’ll attempt to address in short order as a way to move the conversation to a more manageable thread. Quickly: The Piss Christ, which some of you have offered as an example of a hypothetical wherein the piece is offensive regardless of the artist’s intent to offend, is an inapt example, I think—first,