fauxblome
By shag carpet bomb • Dec 29th, 2009 • Category: Fuckstainery, History, Internet, Labor Struggles, Sex & Sexuality, Sex Work, douchebaggerygod. i read amber’s blog, only to learn about some ridiculous blow out in sexworker bloglandia. i really don’t feel like reading everything so as to have an informed position, let alone so I can distill it all for you, but you can learn more by blogging on “alexa di carlo,” fauxho, etc. etc.
and i’m not going to link to anyone because i’m just not interested in getting caught up in all the bullshit. but i did read something that made me laugh and laugh and laugh. from an academic claiming she knows something about fake academics, who quotes some other academic who writes:
For the record: there is no way this person is affiliated with my department. She knows a fair amount about sexuality studies but she constructed a syllabus of the History of Sexuality without including writings from Michel Foucault [Thanks Zoey for the cache link to Alexa's syllabus post]. History of Sexuality: An Introduction is one of the first sexual theory texts first year students read. No-one would leave Michel Foucault out of a basic sexuality reading list. This is tantamount to discussing the history of social labor movements without reading Karl Marx. Fail lady, fail.
that bit about Marx is hilarious. dare I say that reading Marx would be pretty much irrelevant to any such course. I mean, it wouldn’t be useless, but a certainly fine course could be had without reading Marx. I’m wondering if this person would care to explain which text by Marx should be read — and why?
also, the whole thing made me laugh. what it all did was bring it all into sharp relief: the problem with essentialist identitarian thinking.
“we all recognize that no one person can speak for all sex workers. so, we all have a partial view. just because i have certain experiences and think about sex work and johns this way, it doesn’t mean that what i say represents the world of all sex workers.”
“but let me tell you, I can tell a faker when I see one. she’s a faux ho. why? because *I* say so, and I’m a real ho. See my street cred? Because I’m an authentic ho, I get to speak to the issue at hand. And beause I’m authentic, everyone else has to shut up and listen. If you’re not a ho, you have nothing to say about this.”
“mom! she’s not listening. I’m the real ho here and what I say goes.”
“no! I’m not saying that everything i say is the way it is for everyone. but there has to be some line, some cut off point, some place to tell the real from the unreal. and i’m drawing it… with me!”
fuck me people, I feel like whipping out Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble right now, quoting from the passage where she eviscerates the social constructionists, and then illustrating how everything she was saying in that book is being exemplified in this ridiculous debate.
gotta have a solid foundation, a point beyond which it’s not socially constituted, where the real really is, where i can plant my foot firmly somewhere besides up my own ass!
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fuck me people, I feel like whipping out Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble right now, quoting from the passage where she eviscerates the social constructionists, and then illustrating how everything she was saying in that book is being exemplified in this ridiculous debate.
Heh, I have been having this same impulse at least once a week for YEARS. The main reason I don’t generally follow through on it is more or less the same reason why I don’t dump a bucket of antelope blood on myself and then climb into the lion habitat at the zoo to read the text aloud.
I wish you would!
Well, the Communist Manifesto has had its fair share of influence on the labor movement. However I agree that reality really exists.
Sylvestre - ha! It’s true that the communist manifesto had an influence, don’t deny that.
Taking the opp to flesh out my thoughts. Basically, I think she was making a stupid criticism. There are lots of ways to approach the study of the history of sexuality - and a Foucauldian approach is only one. Same with the labor movement. There are probably a ton of professors who leave Marx out of it altogether — and quite likely because some of them are left anti-marxists, etc. Plus, the history of sexuality as a text doesn’t even perform a similar function to the manifesto — which really was written as agitprop. Foucault wasn’t writing agitprop as part of a movement. Which is the mistake that author makes.
Another thing is that by assuming Marx is seminal to the labor movement, I’d think it obscures Marx’s role in clarifying the struggles and wishes of the age. Which is to say: it’s not as if there wasn’t a history of labor struggle before the CM.
all of which you probably have no truck with, though you are a much better marx scholar than I so I’d appreciate your thoughts here.