Article Type : Research Article
Authors : Mocombe PC
Keywords : Neomercantilism; Phenomenological structuralism; Structurationism; Neoliberalism; Globalization; Capitalist world-system
Intersectional theory
highlights how the intersection of power and privilege, or arrangements of
inequality along gender, race, class, global location, sexual orientation, and
age, creates differing forms and intensity of a social actor’s experience of oppression
within capitalist relations of production. This work posits that intersectional
theory is a nonsensical theory that undermines the universality of the
capitalist relations of production upon which contemporary Western societies
are constituted in favor of structurally differentiated serial identities that
do not offer an alternative to the Protestant Ethic and the spirit of
capitalism but rather seeks to integrate it for equality of opportunity,
distribution, and recognition. In fact, I conclude the work by suggesting that
intersectional theory is itself a product of the capitalist relations of
production of postindustrial societies; it is a mechanism of system and social
integration for postindustrial capitalist relations of production with its emphasis
on financially servicing serial identities for the purpose of accumulating
surplus value via their consumption patterns.
Typically
associated with feminism, so-called Black feminism, and the writings of
Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw (1989, 1991), intersectional theory highlights how
the intersection of power and privilege, or arrangements of inequality along
gender, race, class, global location, sexual orientation, and age, i.e.,
“matrix of domination,” creates differing forms and intensity of a social
actor’s experience of oppression within capitalist relations of production
[1,2]. This work, using a structurationist sociological approach,
phenomenological structuralism, to understanding the constitution of society and
human action, posits that intersectional theory is a nonsensical theory that
undermines the universality of the capitalist relations of production upon
which contemporary Western societies are constituted in favor of analyzing the
lived-experiences of individual social actor’s based on their intersecting
structurally differentiated serial identities, created within and by the power
elites of capitalism itself, which do not offer an alternative to the
Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism; instead, the aim of the
intersectional analysis is system and social integration, i.e., for equality of
opportunity, distribution, and recognition, of the other. In fact, I conclude
the work by suggesting that intersectional theory is itself a product of the capitalist
relations of production of postindustrial societies; it is a mechanism of
system and social integration for postindustrial capitalist relations of
production to interpellate and embourgeois the other into the relations of
production of the postindustrial West and America under neoliberal global
processes. That is to say, I am suggesting that intersectional theory is itself
a product of the capitalist relations of production of postindustrial
societies; it is a mechanism of system and social integration for
postindustrial capitalist relations of production with its emphasis on
financially servicing (global) serial identities for the purpose of
accumulating surplus value via their hyper consumption patterns.
Typically
associated with feminism, so-called Black feminism, and the writings of
Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw (1989, 1991), intersectional theory highlights how
the intersection of power and privilege, or arrangements of inequality along
gender, race, class, global location, sexual orientation, and age, creates
differing forms and intensity of a social actor’s experience of oppression
within capitalist relations of production. For the most part, however, this
broad perspective over the serial intersecting forms of a social actor’s
experience of oppression highlighted by this sociological definition overlooks
the fact that it, intersectionality, “is regularly envisioned as the
paradigmatic analytic that stands for both black feminism and black women
(indeed, the two are regularly collapsed and conflated), the theory that
requires women’s studies to reckon with black woman and her imagined
complexity” [2]. This conflation of intersectionality with black feminism and
black women leaves the debates in the academy over intersectionality as a
struggle between utilizing it to demonstrate how the intersection of power and
privilege, or arrangements of inequality along gender, race, class, global
location, sexual orientation, and age, creates differing forms and intensity of
a social actor’s, in the broadest sense of their identities, experience of
oppression within capitalist relations of production, or as a methodological
heuristic tool to explore black feminism and black women [2]. In either case,
there is a failure to understand intersectionality as a product of the
postindustrial mode of production [2]. That is to say, in classic Marxist
terms, intersectionality in the academy is a product of the (postindustrial)
mode of production shaping the ideological superstructure, the academy in this
case, rather than a novice approach in place to critically assess or topple the
system city of postindustrial (neoliberal) capitalist relations of production.
This work, using a structurationist sociological approach, phenomenological
structuralism, to understanding the constitution of society and human action,
posits that intersectional theory is a nonsensical theory that undermines the
universality of the capitalist relations of production upon which contemporary
Western societies are constituted in favor of analyzing the lived-experiences
of individual social actor’s based on their intersecting structurally
differentiated serial identities, created within and by the power elites of
capitalism itself, which do not offer an alternative to the Protestant Ethic
and the spirit of capitalism; instead, the aim of the intersectional analysis
and political praxis is system and social integration, i.e., for equality of
opportunity, distribution, and recognition, of the other. In fact, I conclude
the work by suggesting that intersectional theory is itself a product of the
capitalist relations of production of postindustrial societies; it is a
mechanism of system and social integration for postindustrial (neoliberal
global) capitalist relations of production to interpellate and embourgeois the
other into the relations of production of the postindustrial West and America.
Mocombeian
phenomenological structuralism is a structurationist perspective, which posits
that societal and agential constitution are a result of power relations,
interpellation, and socialization or embourgeoisiement via five systems, i.e.,
mode of production, language, ideology, ideological apparatuses, and
communicative discourse, which are constituted and reified within two dominant
(ontological) types (the Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism or the
Vodou Ethic and the spirit of communism) of system/social structure or what
Mocombe calls a “social class language game” by persons, power elites, who
control the means and modes of production in a material resource framework.
Culture is the characteristics placed on the two (ontological) forms of system
and social integration, which are metaphors for how the human species satisfies
its material needs (communally or a Hobbesian struggle of all against all for
individual wealth, capital) [3]. Once interpellated and socialized (or
embourgeoised in neoliberal capitalism) by these five systems, which are
reified as a social structure and society, social actors recursively organize,
reproduce, and are differentiated by the rules of conduct of the social
structure, which are sanctioned by the power elites (rentier oligarchs in
neoliberal capitalism) who control the means and modes of production, language,
ideology, ideological apparatuses, and communicative discourse in a material
resource framework. Hence, societal and agential constitution are both duality
and dualism: a dualism given the reification of the social structure via the
five systems; and a duality given the internalization of the rules of the five
systems, which become the (structurally differentiated) agential initiatives or
praxes of social actors. Difference, or alternative social praxis, in Mocombe’s
structuration theory, phenomenological structuralism, is not structural
differentiation revealed by praxis as articulated by traditional
structurationists; instead, it is a result of actions arising from the
deferment of meaning and ego-centered communication given the interaction of
two other structuring structures (physiological drives of the body and brain;
and phenomenal properties of subatomic, carrier, particles that constitute the
human subject) during the interpellation and socialization or embourgeoisiement
of social actors throughout their life span or cycle, which produces
alternative praxis that is exercised at the expense of the threat these
practices may pose to the ontological security of social actors in the social
structure or society. These alternative praxes occur in both forms of system
and social integration of the human species and become structurally
differentiated in order to (relationally) define the norms, values, ideas, and
ideals of the two by their respective power elites.
Hence,
Mocombe’s theoretical (structural Marxist) framework is a universal framework
that makes no gender, racial, or ethnic distinctions in its application.
Gender, racial, and ethnic (so-called intersectional) identities are
structurally differentiated serial identities that do not offer alternative
praxes (form of system and social integration) to the current dominant social
class language game, i.e., the Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism;
instead, they are standpoint theories not an alternative ontological form of
system or social integration. To serve as a counter-hegemonic different form of
system and social integration, the serial identities would have to experience,
and protest against, structural differentiation within the alternative form of
system and social integration from which they originally were interpellated,
socialized, and differentiated. That is, if they were constituted and reified
within the practices of the Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism, to
serve as an alternative to the latter they would have to be interpellated,
constituted, and reified within the Vodou Ethic and the spirit of communism
form of system and social integration, which would make them incommensurable
with the practices of the latter. The reverse also holds true; serial
identities differentiated with the ontology of the Vodou Ethic and the spirit
of communism to serve as an alternative counterhegemonic praxis would have to
be interpellated, constituted, and reified within the Protestant Ethic and the
spirit of capitalism. Intersectionality, is not doing that; instead, its serial
identities are negative dialectically highlighting how the intersection of
power and privilege, or arrangements of inequality along gender, race, class,
global location, sexual orientation, and age, creates differing forms and
intensity of a social actor’s experience of oppression within capitalist
relations of production for the purpose of transmogrifying the social structure
for equality of opportunity, recognition, and distribution of those
discriminated against. To this end, intersectional theory is itself a product
of the capitalist relations of production of (neoliberal) postindustrial
societies; it is a mechanism of system and social integration for
postindustrial capitalist relations of production to interpellate and
embourgeois the other into the relations of production of the postindustrial
West and America.
Neoliberalism
represents a resurgence of political economic liberalism in the Western world
following the fall of global communism in the 1990s. Globalization
(1970s-2000s) is the imperial attempt of the West, under American hegemony, to
establish a unipolar world order whereby they integrate and colonize the
(Western and non-Western) world around the juridical framework of political
economic liberalism (neoliberalism), which emanates out of the Weberian
ontology of the Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism, at the expense
of all other forms of system and social integration, via the five Mocombeian
systems (ideology, ideological apparatuses, language, communicative discourse,
and the modes of production). Hence, contemporary (neoliberal) globalization
represents a mercantilist Durkheimian mechanicalization of the world via the
Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism under American (neoliberal)
hegemony around the organization of work (agricultural, periphery nations;
industry, semi-periphery nations, and postindustrial, core nations) and its
ideology, identity politics. The power elites, the upper-class of owners and
high-level executives, rentier oligarchs, of the latter (American hegemon)
serves as an imperial agent seeking to interpellate and embourgeois (via the
organization of work, ideology, ideological apparatuses, language, and
communicative discourse) the masses or multitudes of the world to the juridical
framework of the Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism to constitute a
world imperial (neomercantilism) system wherein countries are divided by the
hegemon, i.e., the United States of America, into periphery, semi-periphery,
and core nations based on prescribed organizations of work (modes of
production) by rentier oligarchs, a multicultural, multiethnic, multigender,
and multiracial upper-class of owners and high-level executives, i.e., a
transnational corporate capitalist class (Leslie Sklair’s term), operating out
of financial based core nations like America and the collective West (including
Australia, South Korea, and Japan). In the age of (neoliberal) capitalist
globalization and climate change this is done within the dialectical processes
of two forms of fascism or system/social integration: 1) right-wing
neoliberalism around the Protestant Ethic and the spirt of capitalism and
organization of work (agribusiness, tourism, and resource extraction of
periphery nations; industry of semi-periphery nations; and service financial
industries in core nations) prescribed to these countries by America and the
West; and 2) (neo) liberal identity politics masquerading as cosmopolitanism or
hybridization “enframed” by a cashlessness pegged to the US dollar backed by
Saudi Arabian oil with the zionist colony state of Israel grounding the Judeo-Christian
metaphysical system of the American empire for social integration via ideology
(identity politics and notions of democracy disseminated throughout the world
by the American mechanism, USAID, National Endowment for Democracy, NED, World
Bank, United Nations, and IMF), ideological apparatuses (church and education),
and (medium of) communicative discourses (media, TV, etc.) under the control of
the West and America.
Both
forms of system and social integration represent two sides of the same fascistic
coin in the age of (neoliberal) globalization and climate change
(1970s-present) even though proponents of the latter (left) position view the
former antagonistically. The former (1), operating through the nationalism and
fascism of right-wing oligarchs, backed by the American hegemon, sets the stage
for the organization of work prescribed to nation-states by American rentier
oligarchs. Once in power and the political and economic order has been prepared
for neoliberal capitalism by right-wing oligarchs, they are offset by the
identity left (2), also supported (USAID and the NED) by rentier oligarchs of
the American hegemon to constitute a political economic order constituted by
two political parties representing both positions, each supported by the rentier
oligarchs of the American empire through its (financial) control of their mode
of production, ideologies, ideological apparatuses, language, and (medium of)
communicative discourse.
Intersectionality
in the academy serves the neoliberal identity politics for system and social
integration of the other into the systemicity of Globalization under American
hegemony; it does not call for an alternative form of system and social
integration to the matrix of domination of the neoliberal order. On the one hand,
in other words, (neo)liberal globalization represents the right-wing
(reactionary) attempt to homogenize (converge) the nations of the globe into
the overall market-orientation, i.e., private property, individual liberties,
and entrepreneurial freedoms, of the capitalist world-system through the
Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism, the retrenchment of the
nation-state system around the organization of work under the control of a
national or comprador bourgeoisie, right-wing nationalism, austerity,
privatization, and protectionism [4-25]. This (neo) liberalization
neomercantilism process under America serving as the metropole of the system is
usually juxtaposed, on the other hand, against the free-trade mantra,
narcissistic exploration of self, sexuality, and identity of the left,
disseminated via ideology, ideological apparatuses, language, and (medium of)
communicative discourse under the controls of America and the West, which
converges with the (neo) liberalizing process via the identity politics and
diversified consumerism of the latter groups as they seek equality of
opportunity, recognition, and distribution (around the organization of work
prescribed to them by rentier oligarchs operating out of America and the West)
with white agents of the former within their market (finance) logic. As
othering reified groups, the other comes to constitute a niche market in
postindustrial America and the West served by a diversified (multicultural,
multisexual, multiracial, etc.) financed capital to generate surplus value
through hyper consumption, finance, insurance, real estate, sports, and
entertainment. The proliferation of intersectional theory, post the 1980s,
educates the administrative professional bourgeoisie of the system on how to
approach and service the other for equality of opportunity, recognition, and
distribution in neoliberal globalization under American hegemony. Hence, both
positions, the convergence of the right and the hybridization of the left, are
(antagonistically) dialectically related in the age of neoliberal globalization
under American hegemony. Private property, individual liberties, diversified
consumerism, and the entrepreneurial freedoms of the so-called marketplace
become the mechanisms of system and social integration for both groups even
though the logic of the marketplace is exploitative, environmentally hazardous,
and impacting the climate of the material resource framework, i.e., the earth,
which often requires the protectionist fascists of the right of the dialectic
to intervene, in keeping with the “double movement” thesis of Karl Polanyi
(2001 [1944]), against the radical (neo) liberalism of the so-called left
representing freedoms to and identity politics under the guise of
intersectional theory and others like it, i.e., postmodernism,
poststructuralism, and critical race theory [26-74].