Debauch the currency!

“United Russia acts as both player and referee by setting or changing the rules as it chooses. Liberals have been outraged by this flagrant violation of democratic principles, but most people are openly indifferent- and rightly so. After all, what difference does it makes for us if the rules of the political game are fair or unfair when the game itself bears no relationship to our lives and when we find the whole spectacle deeply offensive? In the end, the people are the main prize for the candidates. The election winners get to order us around, to rob us and deceive us.”
-Kagarlitsky Back in the USSR

(Warning: potentially triggering for discussion of sexual assault).

Anyone who hates Dworkin should at least give this book a chance before forming an intractable opinion.

Merging feminist literary criticism with political polemic, Intercourse lays out a psycho-social-political analysis of heterosexual fucking, with chapters on Possession, Dirt, Law, Stigma, Virginity, Repulsion and Communion. Dworkin uses historical and literary texts to explore the meanings intercourse has for women and men, the ways in which women internalise male dominance through sex, the use of rape and racial-sexualisation as a political weapon, and sex as redemption. The chapter on Virginity stands out as a loving ode to Joan of Arc’s militant defiance of traditional femininity: Dworkin contrasts Joan’s notorious virginity, a rebellion against women’s sexual servitude, with the descent into adultery which destroys Madame Bovary. Another notable chapter is Communion, in which she uses James Baldwin’s Another Country and Giovanni’s Room to explore emotionally powerful sex: “With this grace, fucking can be a communion, a sharing, mutual possession of an enormous mystery; it has the intensity and magnificence of violent feeling transformed into tenderness” (page 76).

Dworkin’s arguments in this book are often summarized as “all sex is rape,” a sloppy truncation of her complex, historical analysis of the ways gender constructs intercourse, and intercourse constructs gender. Dworkin never once claims that all sex is rape: she emphasizes the fact that heterosexual intercourse always takes place within a social context of male dominance. For example, “Most women are not distinct, private individuals to most men; and so the fuck tends towards the class assertion of dominance. Women live inside this reality of being owned and being fucked: are sensate inside it; the body learning to respond to what male dominance offers as touch, as sex, as love,” (p.83). Dworkin describes fucking as an social institution which perpetuates and protects patriarchy through asserting male ownership over women (male virility and female inferiority), and by regulating through punishment who can fuck who and how (the chapter on Law has a detailed explication of sodomy laws and prohibitions of homosexuality).

To characterize Dworkin as ‘anti-sex’ is grossly simplistic; rather, she locates her politics in an embodied critique of sexual power dynamics and constructions of gender, arguing that in a patriarchal society, female self-determination is always already shaped by male dominance. Therefore, what heterosexual sex means for and feels like to women must be understood as a product of centuries of patriarchal rule. Though marred as a biological essentialist by some critics, Dworkin’s actual analysis is more along the lines of poetic marxism: she writes lyrically about women’s experiences of fucking, grounded in the particular historical, social, political context of Western patriarchy. When Dworkin says, “There is never a real privacy of the body that can coexist with intercourse: with being entered…The thrusting is persistent invasion,” she is not describing what she sees as an essential, objective condition of being a woman, but rather she depicts the socially-inscribed ontology of femininity which has arisen from the context of male domination. Patriarchy needs to construct women as fundamentally different from men, so it emphasizes the penetrability of the vagina, and the female body’s lack of privacy, because men do not have vaginas and women do. Patriarchy also brutally demonizes the penetration of men, sodomy, because for men to be fucked the way women are fucked challenges this sexual power structure, the rigid dichotomy of gender.

Queer readers may find Dworkin’s focus on heterosexual sex rather narrowly normative, and indeed she fails to consider lesbian eroticism, or the subversion of queer identities, despite some discussion of gay sexuality. Her analysis relies on making a lot of generalizations about women and men’s interactions, mostly void of cultural specificity, which basically amounts to her universalising a white subject position. The only chapter which really acknowledges race and cultural difference is Dirt/Death, which connects narratives of feminine sordidness with constructions of racial inferiority used to condone violence against African-Americans and Jews. These narratives, perpetuated by dominant whites, portray all women, but particularly women of colour as inherently degraded and therefore rapable: “Racially motivated rape is considerably protected by the misogyny that finds the rape of women as such no atrocity at all” (pg.224) The fact that discussion of racial difference is limited to one chapter is problematic in a book which is supposed to consider intercourse ‘in general’; separating and containing her discussion of race this way reveals that the rest of her analysis is centered on white heterosexuality.

Stylistically, Dworkin has a tendency to repeat herself, belabour a point, and use a startling number of semi-colons. But while this book is limited in scope and subject position, it is still an important contribution to feminist theory as an analysis of heterosexuality, even if only to illuminate the historical development of radical feminist thought.

Here’s an essay critiquing the new foreword by Ariel Levy, arguing that her portrayal of Dworkin is anti-feminist: http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/levy/
-H

“Women and the Politics of Military Confrontation: Palestinian and Israeli Gendered Narratives of Dislocation” edited by Nahla Abdo and Ronit Lentin

Bringing together Palestinian and Israeli women writing on their various experiences of exile and home, violence and diasporacity, this book constructs a complex narrative of women’s lives taking place within this political conflict—lives which are often overlooked in mainstream political coverage. The essays explore the personal struggles of living between hostile cultures, family histories, theories of dislocation, political activism, and gendered social constructions. With the contributors ranging from Palestinian daughters of exiles, to Arab Jews living in Israel, to the children of Holocaust survivors, this collection unfolds the political and social realities of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict from the many points of view of the women who live it. Emphasizing cooperative solidarity, dialogue and a plurality of subject positions, the editors, Abdo and Lentin, present a many-voiced critical feminist analysis of militarism, racism, institutional and cultural sexism, tradition, the Israeli state, experiences of diaspora, nationalism, and exile. The contributors as a collective consider the problems of organizing peace activism between Palestinians and Israelis, patriarchy in Arab and Jewish cultures, social constructions of ‘otherness’, conflicts between feminism and nationalism, as well as racism within the feminist movement in Israel and the West. 

“Whether it is the Israeli government placing militarisation for the sake of ‘national security’ above all other interests, or conservative forces in Palestinian society placing the struggle for national liberation above women’s rights, both of these approaches reflect the same patriarchal interests.”

From the essay ‘Nightmare’ by Nablia Espanioly

“Recognizing our complicity in what goes on around us, perhaps inescapable despite the awareness, is unending morally charged work.”

From the essay ‘In tow: A Mother’s and Daughter’s Gendered Departures and Returns’ by Rela Mazali
-H

“Bourgeois revolutions, like those of the eighteenth century, storm more swiftly from success to success, their dramatic effects outdo each other, men and things seem set in sparkling diamonds, ecstasy is the order of the day – but they are short-lived, soon they have reached their zenith, and a long Katzenjammer [cat’s winge] takes hold of society before it learns to assimilate the results of its storm-and-stress period soberly. On the other hand, proletarian revolutions, like those of the nineteenth century, constantly criticize themselves, constantly interrupt themselves in their own course, return to the apparently accomplished, in order to begin anew; they deride with cruel thoroughness the half-measures, weaknesses, and paltriness of their first attempts, seem to throw down their opponents only so the latter may draw new strength from the earth and rise before them again more gigantic than ever, recoil constantly from the indefinite colossalness of their own goals – until a situation is created which makes all turning back impossible, and the conditions themselves call out: Hic Rhodus, hic salta!”

- Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

“Every artist, everyone who considers themselves an artist, has the right to create freely according to his ideal, independently of everything. However, we are Communists and we must not stand with folded hands and let chaos develop as it pleases.” -Lenin

In a recent TED lecture Sheena Iyengar discussed some preconceptions people have in making choices. One of the principle questions is whether more choices are necessarily better, which she believes to be be a common idea for Americans. It is interesting that Americans identified several choices when shown several varieties of soda, whereas Russians nearly across the board said there was only one choice: soda. There is a problem in terms of the framing of the question of choice, which once shifted significantly questions some seemingly common sense based ideas.

I think when we talk in general about what “freedom” means in the United States, there are some tacit assumptions about what we are referring to. Freedom is aligned with “agency”, or ones ability to decide on their actions based on their own volition without external coercion. This definition of freedom which I align with liberalism begins to fall apart nearly immediately when we scratch the surface. The choices we make are always influenced by our historical experience, our relationship to law, and what we desire or aim toward in our actions is influenced in the extreme by our cultural circumstances. There is a coded language of universal and abstract “will” behind the discourse of freedom which ignores history, circumstance, conditioning, and especially the way the discourse of freedom itself is framed. I have argued else-where about the absurdity of the “pure realm” of art—  it is imperative that we see the same to be true of freedom.

In Marcuse’s essay on liberal tolerance, he does an excellent job of explaining why “free speech” in a general sense can actually be detrimental to freedom considered socially. We are living in circumstances of hierarchical power structures to such an extent that an equal playing field would actually entail the necessity of silencing and coercing some people who have power in a given situation. The argument that racist voices should be given equal rights as voices advocating for the dismantling of racist systems must necessarily ignore the structural racism at play. The problem of framing is involved, as the two sides are seen as isolated entities rather then two forces being swept along by an already existing tide of public opinion, international domination of people of colour, a prison-industrial complex that is disproportionately filled with poc people, and brutal anti-immigration tactics.  Any idea of “freedom” that doesn’t factor in the general direction on a wider social level is going to be a severely impoverished account.

Lenin’s quote with which I opened this discussion seems to be a sort of “have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too-ism”, where the artist is able to produce with complete impunity, but also needs to consider their role and position in the class struggle. I think rather that these two sides are congruent in a way that is difficult to grasp for people (like myself) fostered in a society that is structured monadically. “Social responsibility” is an increasingly unpopular topic, and most people would defend themselves in the interest of freedom against their social responsibility, whether it be as an artist, or chemist. If we re-frame the way we look at morality on terms of issues like class, I think we get a more holistic image of social well-being that actually renders the conditions for the possibility of a meaningful freedom.

Hegel offers an interesting and provocative definition of freedom that I think it would be wise for us to consider socially. Freedom is a relationship to un-freedom, in other words, freedom itself only exists as left does to right, rather than as an abstract category of individual volition. This definition by necessity points us toward taking a wider scope in our definition of morality, and also locates it in concrete instances of oppression. What I think needs to be added to this understanding to make it complete, is an approach which seeks to account for systemic instances of non-freedom, rather than simply saying “that’s the way it is”, ascribing it to some trans-historical definition of human nature. One of Marxism’s great intellectual achievements was the realization that freedom means something extremely more complicated than “doing what one wants”, and positing that true freedom is a dialectic interplay between the desire and responsibility to the society in which it plays out. I am interested in the radical non-subject oriented perspective this brings up, which non-the-less understands that there is no objective standpoint to critique from, nor a properly speaking “social whole” that can act as an object of critique. The dialectic process is a method of illuminating social relationships and adjusting based on the interplay of various perspectives.

This idea is especially important when we talk more specifically about what the stakes are for achieving freedom, and what the role of the Communist in trying to develop them is. In Benjamin’s essay on The Role of the Artist as Producer we are given one of the best descriptions of communisms role in the arts. Rather than the focus on the individual genius, issues like class antagonism actually bar the possibilities for the creative outlet of proletarian people. When Steve Jobs died there was a strong outpour of voices defending his genius, and ability to understand and program devices people wanted. No one asked the question: How many brilliant people were never given the chance to develop their ability because they were working in a sweatshop producing these devices? The fantasy of the genius who through sheer talent and ability is able to become rich seems almost absurd when we consider the conditions of the proletarian forces who are coerced into signing statements that they won’t commit suicide or their family will face financial consequences.

Reframing freedom as a task for communists would more accurately be described as “refracting” freedom, a balancing that considers the point where it interacts, and alters its course through this interaction.
-M