Base and Superstructure

Alienation, autonomy, and ideology

Category: Language (Page 6 of 9)

These are posts on language from the blog Base and Superstructure. Topics include political terminology, language use among politicians and political analysts, and the terminology of social movements.

authentic food

Should We Eat ‘Authentic Food’?

August 12, 2019 /

People talk about ‘authentic food’ or ‘authenticity’ during discussions of cultural appropriation. That’s a frequent site of disagreement. But I think it’s worth talking about those phrases in their own right. Not that I don’t have any thoughts on cultural appropriation. Maybe I’ll write about that later. For now, check out Briahna Joy Gray’s article in Current Affairs as a starting point.

‘Authenticity’, in general, and ‘authentic food’, in particular, raise their own issues.

The fact is, ‘authentic food’ is all the rage. Diners and reviewers alike demand it. When you turn on Food Network, you see celebrity chef Aarón Sánchez judging Chopped contestants on it. And when the show goes to commercial break, you listen to him tell you to ‘go auténtico’.

And it’s not only reviewers and diners. There’s a broad consensus on this. Plenty of left-leaning critics of cultural appropriation, particularly ones found on social media, also uphold the virtues of authentic food. Along with it, they extol the virtues of broader notions of authenticity.

What should we make of all this? A few leading questions: What do people mean when they talk about ‘authentic food’? The same thing? What kind of a word is ‘authentic’? Where do broader cultural practices enter the picture?

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Two Concepts of White Privilege

July 3, 2019 /
white privilege

Source: Philip Cohen (https://www.flickr.com/photos/philipcohen/38444249116)

The concept of white privilege is central to contemporary social justice movements. And though there are disagreements, there’s a broad consensus on what white privilege amounts to. Roughly, white privilege is a set of benefits one gets merely in virtue of being white. Society confers these benefits not due to wealth, effort, or any other feature, but merely from whiteness. These benefits might be economic, political (e.g., citizenship status), or something much less tangible.

But this idea that white privilege is a benefit to whites was not always central to the concept. There’s an older concept of white privilege complicating this picture. On that older concept, white privilege often had short term benefits for whites. But those came at the expense of long term harm to working-class organizing that hits both whites and non-whites.

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How to Handle Conflicts With Fellow Activists

May 16, 2019 /

conflicts leftist

Leftist activists disagree with one another. In other news, bears shit in the woods, the Pope is Catholic, etc. This disagreement is the cause of Twitter conflicts ranging from polite discussion to dumpster fires. How should we handle these conflicts? Should we try to get along? When? How can we tell when we’re taking conflicts too far?

Without knowing precisely what the danger is, would you say it’s time for our viewers to crack each other’s heads open and feast on the goo inside?

I’ll address some of these questions in this post. Probably not the one from The Simpsons.

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class-identitarianism identity

Is Class an Identity? On Class-Identitarianism

April 29, 2019 /

Lots of people now think about class in terms of identity. But this is a peculiarly modern idea. We find it in terms like ‘Nascar Dads’. And we find it in weird, quasi-ideological attachments to Carhartt products. We might call the politics of class-as-identity ‘class-identitarianism.’ It’s an ugly term, but let’s not shy away from ugly. At least not yet.

I’m working on answering two questions in this post. First, is class an identity? And, if it is, does class-identitarianism offer an explanatory framework that helps us make sense of the world and/or formulate a better political path?

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Chomsky-Foucault Debate: Live from 1971

April 22, 2019 /
chomsky-foucault debate

Source: Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Foucalt.png)

Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault sat down for a debate in the early 1970s. You can watch the whole thing here. The transcript, along with some related essays from both Chomsky and Foucault, is available to buy as a book. It’s known as the Chomsky-Foucault debate.

I wasn’t new to either Chomsky or Foucault when I watched and read the Chomsky-Foucault debate. And the short debate format has its clear limits. But I did come away with a few impressions and lessons learned.

I’ll lay those out.

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