Baudrillard, Feminism, and Transphobia
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- Опубликовано: 13 сен 2024
- In this episode, I present my article titled "Jean Baudrillard and Feminism: Sara Ahmed and the Necessity to 'Forget Baudrillard.'" You can find it here if you'd like to read it: mast-nemla.org/...
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There is this really bizarre tendency among philosophers to try and treat with transness as an inherently political project which you identify. You can see this in Zizek, too, as he desperately demonstrates that being trans is not revolutionary and trans people look at him and go, "No shit, trash-panda, we're just trying to live here."
This then gets reified into a form of culture-warism that seeks to make us symbols of conflict and miscasts the relationship of transness and radicalism, suggesting that radicalism must beget transness (and thus transness must be seen to be a failed attempt at radicalism) instead of understanding that it is life within society as part of its underclass, all too often lumpenproletarianised simply for existing, that produces a tendency towards radical thought among trans people. When your society is built to kill people like you for being like you, you cannot help but recognize that it is your society, and not you, which must be destroyed.
It is ironic, then, that in the very attempt to reject the impulse to culture-war, these authors instead engage in the same slight-of-hand that doctrinaire culture-warriors engage in: misidentifying the relationship between ideas, material conditions, and oppression. We expect this from many of these people, who cling to a sort of implicit Hegelianism that privileges an abstract war of ideas over a concrete conflict over conditions, but the false consciousness within revolutionaries that is often revealed is no less telling. Swimming in the unending sea of ideology, they have once again mistaken ideology for materiality.
wow this is actually a really good comment,thanks for sharing. Specially because i feel like im sometimes i treat with transness as an inherently political project. but i feel like irl it's alot more dificult not to do so,because most conversations that are about trans people(cis people talking about trans people),are almot exclusively political. but this defs gave me some food for thought (:
@@stevenempolyed9937 Thanks for saying that.
I've got some quips about all trans-gression being political in some ways and the awkwardness of literally embodying politics, but ultimately I don't have any particularly helpful advice, because we have had political-ness forced upon us in a sense, and you aren't wrong for seeing that. And, to be fair, a lot of the conversations about us that _aren't_ political are pretty upsetting in their own right (in that they instead tend to reduce us to our bodies), so I think that you shouldn't necessarily be concerned that you aren't having them.
*Demonstrates that being named Zizek is not inherently revolutionary*
*Zizek vaporizes instantly*
"A sort of implicit Hegelianism that privileges an abstract war of ideas over a concrete conflict over(sic) conditions." To the contrary; Hegel appears to attack this privilege when he instantiates "the knot"
@@gettaasteroid4650 The over there is grammatically correct - it's just a bit structurally unwise. I probably should have used regarding the second time.
Unfortunately, I'm unable to find a decent review of the subject of Hegel and "the knot" through any search engine, because it doesn't seem to be commonly used, so I can't really respond to your argument in any coherent way. I won't pretend to know Hegel through Hegel, but rather through Marx, which the searching I did indicates is taken as a misunderstanding of Hegel by many Hegel scholars.
7:30 the code□
9:50 👨🎓🎲sub/obj antagonist
13:50 onto/specific/🦸♀️
16:45 performanity
Thanks for this David, really cool to see you talk about your own works.
Very in-depth Baudrillard. I’ve been following you for like 5 years. Man you’re doing some deep dives now. I don’t really care about all the isms and phobias but in that you’ve used these symbols to explore Integral Reality and Identity, Kudos
The male simulacrum of the feminine, perhaps the ultimate expression of the hyper-real implosion. Trans-politics being the implosion of feminism and gay rights.
Not so much a natural progression, but a progression of the natural into hyper real normalization
And sure, the trans community genuinely suffers prejudice, but we shouldn't confuse the very real violence dished out to the trans community, as the reason for the simulacrum's current obsession With gender fluidity.
Like Baudrillard said of the simulacrum of the first Gulf War, the fact that real people were suffering and dying, didn't make it a real event.
The current obsession with trans rights, like the obsession with the santiization of war for 24 hour news cycles is about the co-option of the real, of the other into normalization. Rather. An annihilation that is far more effective at negating the real, and the other than conservative or reactionary suppression.
Like Baudrillard said of pornography, a far more successful suppression of sex than anything the Catholic church could achieve. On the contrary, the suppression of sex made it all the more desirable, unlike today's jaded millennials and their rejection of sex, fed on a diet of hardcore internet porn.
The other, the exotic, the weird has to be co-opted by the simulacrum, given its hot subversive nature. It's central challenge to homogenized global culture of late capitalism. The trans community being brought into the arena of hyper reality, not as a celebration of the other, but its negation.
And also a means of sanitizing the conservative reactionary repulsion of the other, a guise under which the far right is co-opted into hyper real normalization.
Transphobia a guise under which conservatives can gain support without the more contentious attack on gays and feminists. The trans community a useful punching bag for the hyper real to deflect from more serious threats to its homogenized cool running
It's nearly almost always wrong to assume capitalist inclusion is progressive, inclusion more used to mollify genuine antagonisms than to create de facto harmony.
Hence the initial social inclusion of the working classes into politics, a case of progress classless society - or a means under which the class system is allowed to survive?
Like the identity politics of the present, a means of creating a genderless society, or a guise under which gender is not only preserved but expanded? The bolstering of the construct of gender under the guise of its negation. A world in which there are multiple genders, wherein the idea of gender and identity exponentially increases.
Trans people are not a political punching bag. Left wing political commentary about gender is a political punching bag.
@@milestrevelyan3858 I wasn't claiming that trans people should be a political punching bag. Just looking at this issue in Baudrillardian context, in relation to hyper reality and negation of polarities.
Such as other implosions in culture, politics, economics wherein everything implodes into a central space.
Baudrillard saw reality as being defined by polarities. One thing defining against its opposite.
As opposites implode the real breaks down, and a simulacra of reality takes over.
Simulations of gender being a case in point. Perhaps the ultimate implosion of opposites.
That's not to say trans rights shouldn't be recognized in terms of constructive policies, but this is a deeper philosophical argument that Baudrillard is making.
That the real impetus for trans rights, may be part of a hyper real bubble of virtual reality, Baudrillard not seeing people and politicians being in charge of events anymore, but the vast media/ information self-generating gestalt.
As in Gender politics may not be what they seem on the surface. Might be generated by the hyper real's need to destroy binaries, the natural, the human - reality itself.
@@JAMAICADOCK I could not agree with any of that more. Baudrillard got so much impressively right.
I was taking issue specifically with the paragraph in your initial response that begins with “transphobia.”
But the last paragraph of your initial response is where you really nail it. Is the trans/gender phenomena occurring now a negation of gender or an obsession with the gender poles and their representation in an increasingly distorted way.
You understand nothing and it's clear you have never talk with a real trans person or even know about they face
Sorry but no, Baudrillard is a transphobe who can't see past his own perception and privilege and it's evident he also didn't even try to meet real trans people to see what they were living and feeling
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but the thrust of the argument here seems like a bit of a nitpick rather than actually supporting any meaningful argument. What I mean is, arguing that the hyper-real is not opposed to the real but rather is one with the real. Is it not perfectly reasonable to understand the hyper-real as consuming the real in the post-modern world? Is that not the marker of post-modernity? I use the word "consume" here because it captures both the character of opposition that you say is inappropriate as well as the idea that the simulacra actually is the real, or alternatively that the real no longer really exists in a world consumed by simulacra.
the only correct take here. thank you.
Baudrillard, Feminism, and Transphobia - if one applies these three things, it does not make any sense in countries like India, Pakistan, South East Asia in terms of feminism and transfobia
whilst assuming i wont be responded to i will comment anyway.
I am wondering whether your account of Baudrillardian theory is an accurate depiction of how simulacra relates to gender. Wouldn't in terms of simulation and simulacra the binary between man and woman is a more appealing simulation of reality rather than of gender being performative (Butler's position) as this interpretation very closely reflects the nihilistic nature of our bodies to mean absolutely nothing? Science now shows the categorisations of man and woman to be unstable signifiers due to the anatomical features of the 'opposing' female and male bodies actually 'in reality' (objectively through science) aren't so different. For example, levels of testosterone which are considered 'man' levels also can exist in women's bodies, hence the removal of these binary signifiers brings us closer to an objective and nihilistic world where constructing our identity is now completely left to market relations and consumer habits as no longer do any 'bad' or 'illusory' representations exist? Maybe i have misread Baudrillard and would love for someone to guide me in the right direction to understand his theory as it highly intrigues me yet i see little movement in his theory as it seems anti-productive in order to avoid complete hyperreality. (Also i do not align with this take, i believe gender binaries to be a highly oppressive system which i do not identify with and advocate for it's destruction. Yet, i also fear how identity is to be constructed in the future, with the lack of mystery in the world and only left to consume it seems we may be doomed on symbolic constructions of identity, how are we in the future able to sustain socialised identities which remain symbolic and meaningful yet not determined by the white, heteronormative and patriarchal order? It seems Baudrillard doesn't care to dismantle this order or any order based on ideology but simply to stay closer to first or second order simulations)
Thank you 👍🏾
What is more of the natural real than your genitalia and its specific essential function in the creation of new life? It seems to me that the hyper real influence would be one trying to wrest the symbolic meaning from ‘man’ and ‘woman’ that has emerged from eons of human life in which these distinctions were fundamental to the structure of society, interpersonal relations, and individual identity.
Your idea of genders is barely 200 years old and is a eurocentric concept that ignores completely different constructions of gender outside of your parochial insistence.
And, as always, you fall face first in to the first and most obvious pitfall of terf ideology: by asserting that the reproductive role of individual bodies is dispositive of their gender, you place post-menopausal women firmly outside of woman status. You do the same to infertile individuals. Even you don't believe the classifiers you spout off.
Not everyone is born with the typical ideal of genitalia nor is capable of reproduction, so give that a thought
@@TheTiredPotato Yeah, some people get honorary Darwin Awards. Your point?
its dummy to think that anatomical sex is limited solely to genitalia and not being interwoven throughout the body's overarching system. It's also dummy to ignore the histories that didn't support your biological essentialist western view didn't exist. Yr just using heady terms to be a bigot
I think I got second-hand soy exposure watching this video.
This is funny
transphobia is not a real thing. trans identifying males are MEN, and androphobia is not a societal problem. also, if you don't know how to pronounce something, look up the pronunciation before you mention it. It's "lay-trahn-zhay". you mispronounced "vehemently" too.
Still ruled by ego! Stop looking at yourself and look at the camera!
Never!
Stop taking photos of yourself, narcissist!
See? It sounds dumb
continental philosophy not even once. lol why the ridiculously muddled style, is thr goal obscuring?
Read some thought like this before critiquing it. Being ill-informed about a style and not being accustomed doesn’t make what you critique invalid.
Nobody needs humanism
Without humanism Christianity truly is dead. I don't think our culture is ready for such a sudden shift on a mass scale.
yes i would like the predators to be out of the schools. @@tangerinesarebetterthanora7060