Logic of identity

[matthew piscioneri]

Bob, you say

>so you can
>easily afford your contempt.

Contempt of who or what? Of non-flashy replies...I don't think so. Contempt 
for the revolutionary subject of history? That's unfair. Next you'll be 
calling me a class traitor, for like you:

>and  i can speak coz i alas (and antecedants) am of the former (like
>ralphie, only a amateur philosopher).

I don't know what you expect: an "unthinking" mythic solidarity with your 
own class. This sort of dogmatism IMO undermines class/value solidarity. Yet 
assuming a position of self-critique engenders a patronizing attitude which 
replicates other oppressive structures.

So the question remains with whom are we in solidarity?

>as for where i come from, ...you know the boss, so you know youngstown,
>...empire has abandoned us this "hundred yrs" for sunnier climes;

sure solidarity with your family, neighbours and community. Doesn't this 
comes prior to ideas of class? You see people hurting around you and this 
SHOULD elicit solidarity. What next? Information, education, resistance, a 
cup of tea. On a micro level solidarity IMO just isn't in question. Moving 
to the macro is where the cracks start to appear in the socialist 
ideological apparatus. Grand holistic aspirations (domination of the 
universal, perhaps) lead to the suppression of the particular. Isn't that 
the logic of the identity? Isn't that what Foucault learnt from H. & A., and 
why he could only theorize local resistance?

MattP

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