CP collapses politics, precludes alternative discourses, only the perm solves

The sounds of silence are several in poverty research. Whereas many welfare policy analysts are constrained by economistic- herapeutic-manage- na1 discourse, others find themselves silenced by a politics of euphemisms. The latter suggests that if only the right words can be found, then political change will quickly follow. This is what happens when a good idea goes bad, when the interrogation of discourse collapses into the valorization of terminological distinctions.' Recently, I attended a conference of social workers who were part of a network of agencies seeking to assist homeless youths. A state legislator addressed the group and at one point in the question-and-answer pe- riod commiserated with one professional about how the by then well- accepted phrase children at risk ought to be dropped, for it is pejorative. The legislator preferred children under stress as a more "politically correct" euphemism. Much discussion ensued regarding how to categorize clients so as to neither patronize nor marginalize them. No one, however, mentioned the reifying effects of all categorization, or how antiseptic language only exacerbates the problem by projecting young people in need onto one or another dehumanizing dimension of therapeutic discourse.' No one sug- gested that although isolated name changes may be a necessary part of political action, they are insufficient by themselves. No one emphasized the need for renamings that destabilize prevailing institutional practices.' In- stead, a science of renaming seemed to displace a politics of interrogation. A fascination with correcting the terms of interpersonal communication had replaced an interest in the critique of structure. A comfort in dealing with discourse in the most narrow and literal sense had replaced an interest in the broader discursive structures that set the terms for reproducing organized daily life. I was left to question how discourse and structure need to be seen as connected before reflection about poverty can inform political action.' The deconstruction of prevailing discursive structures helps politi- cize the institutionalized practices that inhibit alternative ways of con- structing social relations.5 Isolated acts of renaming, however, are unlikely to help promote political change if they are not tied to interrogations of the structures that serve as the interpretive context for making sense of new terms.' This is especially the case when renamings take the form of euphemisms designed to make what is described appear to be consonant with the existing order. In other words, the problems of a politics of renaming are not confined to the left, but are endemic to what amounts to a classic American practice utilized across the political spectrum.' Homeless, wel- fare, and family planning provide three examples of how isolated in- stances of renaming fail in their efforts to make a politics out of sanitizing language. Reconsidering the Politics of Renaming Renaming can do much to indicate respect and sympathy. It may strategi- cally recast concerns so that they can be articulated in ways that are more appealing and less dismissive. Renaming the objects of political contesta- tion may help promote the basis for articulating latent affinities among disparate political constituencies. The relentless march of renamings can help denaturalize and delegitimate ascendant categories and the constraints they place on political possibility. At the moment of fissure, destabilizing renamings have the potential to encourage reconsideration of how biases embedded in names are tied to power relations." Yet isolated acts of renam- ing do not guarantee that audiences will be any more predisposed to treat things differently than they were before. The problem is not limited to the political reality that dominant groups possess greater resources for influenc- ing discourse. Ascendant political economies, such as liberal postindustrial capitalism, whether understood structurally or discursively, operate as insti- tutionalized systems of interpretation that can subvert the most earnest of renamings." It is just as dangerous to suggest that paid employment exhausts possi- bilities for achieving self-sufficiency as to suggest that political action can be meaningfully confined to isolated renamings.'° Neither the workplace nor a name is the definitive venue for effectuating self-worth or political intervention." Strategies that accept the prevailing work ethos will con- tinue to marginalize those who cannot work, and increasingly so in a post- industrial economy that does not require nearly as large a workforce as its industrial predecessor. Exclusive preoccupation with sanitizing names over- looks the fact that names often do not matter to those who live out their lives according to the institutionalized narratives of the broader political economy, whether it is understood structurally or discursively, whether it is monolithically hegemonic or reproduced through allied, if disparate, prac- tices. What is named is always encoded in some publicly accessible and as- cendent discourse." Getting the names right will not matter if the names are interpreted according to the institutionalized insistences of organized society." Only when those insistences are relaxed does there emerge the possibil- ity for new names to restructure daily practices. Texts, as it now has become notoriously apparent, can be read in many ways, and they are most often read according to how prevailing discursive structures provide an interpretive context for reading diem. 14 The meanings implied by new names of necessity overflow their categorizations, often to be reinterpreted in terms of available systems of intelligibility (most often tied to existing institutions). Whereas re- naming can maneuver change within the interstices of pervasive discursive structures, renaming is limited in reciprocal fashion. Strategies of containment that seek to confine practice to sanitized categories appreciate the discursive character of social life, but insufficiently and wrongheadedly. I do not mean to suggest that discourse is dependent on structure as much as that structures are hegemonic discourses. The operative structures reproduced through a multitude of daily practices and reinforced by the efforts of aligned groups may be nothing more than stabilized ascendent discourses." Structure is the alibi for discourse. We need to destabilize this prevailing interpretive context and the power plays that reinforce it, rather than hope that isolated acts of linguistic sanitization will lead to political change. Interrogating structures as discourses can politicize the terms used to fix meaning, produce value, and establish identity. Denaturalizing value as the product of nothing more than fixed interpretations can create new possibilities for creating value in other less insistent and injurious ways. The discursively/structurally reproduced reality of liberal capitalism as deployed by power blocs of aligned groups serves to inform the existentially lived experiences of citizens in the contemporary postindustrial order." The powerful get to reproduce a broader context that works to reduce the dissonance between new names and established practices. As long as the prevailing discursive structures of liberal capitalism create value from some practices, experiences, and identities over others, no matter how often new names are insisted upon, some people will continue to be seen as inferior simply because they do not engage in the same practices as those who are currently dominant in positions of influence and prestige. Therefore, as much as there is a need to reconsider the terms of debate, to interrogate the embedded biases of discursive practices, and to resist living out the invid- ious distinctions that hegemonic categories impose, there are real limits to what isolated instances of renaming can accomplish. Renaming points to the profoundly political character of labels. Labels oper- ate as sources of power that serve to frame identities and interests. They predispose actors to treat the subjects in question in certain ways, whether they are street people or social policies. This increasingly common strategy, however, overlooks at least three major pitfalls to the politics of renaming." Each reflects a failure to appreciate language's inability to say all that is meant by any act of signification. First, many renamings are part of a politics of euphemisms that conspires to legitimate things in ways consonant with hegemonic discourse. This is done by stressing what is consistent and de-emphasizing what is inconsis- tent with prevailing discourse. When welfare advocates urge the nation to invest in its most important economic resource, its children, they are seek- ing to recharacterize efforts on behalf of poor families as critical for the country's international economic success in a way that is entirely consonant with the economistic biases of the dominant order. They are also distracting the economic-minded from the social democratic politics that such policy changes represent." This is a slippery politics best pursued with attention to how such renamings may reinforce entrenched institutional practices." Yet Walter Truett Anderson's characterization of what happened to the "cultural revolution" of the 1960s has relevance here: One reason it is so hard to tell when true cultural revolutions have occurred is that societies are terribly good at co-opting their opponents; something that starts out to destroy the prevailing social construction of reality ends up being a part of it. Culture and counterculture overlap and merge in countless ways. And the hostility, toward established social constructions of reality that produced strikingly new movements and behaviors in the early decades of this century, and peaked in the 1960s, is now a familiar part of the cultural scene. Destruction itself becomes institutionalized." According to Jeffrey Goldfarb, cynicism has lost its critical edge and has become the common denominator of the very society that cynical criticism sought to debunk .21 If this is the case, politically crafted characterizations can easily get co-opted by a cynical society that already anticipates the politi- cal character of such selective renamings. The politics of renaming itself gets interpreted as a form of cynicism that uses renamings in a disingenuous ashion in order to achieve political ends. Renaming not only loses credibility but also corrupts the terms used. This danger is ever present, given the limits of language. Because all terms are partial and incomplete characterizations, every new term can be invalidated as not capturing all that needs to be said about any topic? With time, the odds increase that a new term will lose its potency as it fails to emphasize ne-glected dimensions of a problem. As newer concerns replace the ones that helped inspire the terminological shift, newer terms will be introduced to ad- dress what has been neglected. Where disabled was once an improvement over handicapped, other terms are now deployed to make society inclusive of all people, however differentially situated. The "disabled" are now "physi- cally challenged" or "mentally challenged?' The politics of renaming pro- motes higher and higher levels of neutralizing language." Yet a neutralized language is itself already a partial reading even if it is only implicitly biased in favor of some attributes over others. Neutrality is always relative to the prevailing context As the context changes, what was once neutral becomes seen as biased. Implicit moves of emphasis and de-emphasis become more visible in a new light. "Physically" and "mentally challenged" already begin to look insufficiently affirmative as efforts intensify to include people with such attributes in all avenues of contemporary life.24 Not just terms risk being corrupted by a politics of renaming. Proponents of a politics of renaming risk their personal credibility as well. Proponents of a politics of renaming often pose a double bind for their audiences. The politics of renaming often seeks to highlight sameness and difference si- multaneously.25 It calls for stressing the special needs of the group while at the same time denying that the group has needs different from those of anyone else. Whether it is women, people of color, gays and lesbians, the disabled, or even "the homeless:' renaming seeks to both affirm and deny difference. This can be legitimate, but it is surely almost always bound to be difficult. Women can have special needs, such as during pregnancy, that make it unfair to hold them to male standards; however, once those differ- ent circumstances are taken into account, it becomes inappropriate to as- sume that men and women are fundamentally different in socially signifi- cant ways .21 Yet emphasizing special work arrangements for women, such as paid maternity leave, may reinforce sexist stereotyping that dooms women to inferior positions in the labor force. Under these circumstances, advocates of particular renamings can easily be accused of paralyzing their audience and immobilizing potential sup- porters. Insisting that people use terms that imply sameness and difference simultaneously is a good way to ensure such terms do not get used. This encourages the complaint that proponents of new terms are less interested in meeting people's needs than in demonstrating who is more sophisticated and sensitive. Others turn away, asking why they cannot still be involved in trying to right wrongs even if they cannot correct their use of terminology," Right-minded, if wrong-worded, people fear being labeled as the enemy; important allies are lost on the high ground of linguistic purity. Euphemisms also encourage self-censorship. The politics of renaming discourages its proponents from being able to respond to inconvenient infor- mation inconsistent with the operative euphemism. Yet those who oppose it are free to dominate interpretations of the inconvenient facts. This is bad politics. Rather than suppressing stories about the poor, for instance, it would be much better to promote actively as many intelligent interpretations as possible. The politics of renaming overlooks that life may be more complicated than attempts to regulate the categories of analysis. Take, for instance, the curious negative example of "culture?' Somescholars have been quite insis- tent that it is almost always incorrect to speak about culture as a factor in explaining poverty, especially among African Americans .211 Whereas some might suggest that attempts to discourage examining cultural differences, say in family structure, are a form of self-censorship, others might want to argue that it is just clearheaded, informed analysis that de- mphasizes cul- ture's relationship to poverty.29 Still others suggest that the question of what should or should not be discussed cannot be divorced from the fact that when blacks talk publicly in this country it is always in a racist society that uses their words to reinforcetheir subordination. Open disagreement among African Americans will be exploited by whites to delegitimate any challengesto racism and to affirm the idea that black marginalization is self-generated.3° Emphasizing cultural differences between blacks and whites and exposing internal "problems" in the black community minimize how "problems" across races and structural political-economic factors, including especially the racist and sexist practices of institutionalized society, are the primary causes of poverty. Yet it is distinctly possible that although theories proclaiming a "culture of poverty" are incorrect, cultural variation itself may be an important issue in need of examination." For instance, there is much to be gained from contrasting the extended-family tradition among African Americans with the welfare system of white society, which is dedicated to reinforcing the nuclear two-parent family.32 A result of self-censorship, however, is that animportant subject is left to be studied by the wrong people. Although ana- lyzing cultural differences may not tell us much about poverty and may be dangerous in a racist society, leaving it to others to study culture and poverty can be a real mistake as well. Culture in their hands almost always becomes "culture of poverty."" A politics of renaming risks reducing the discussants to only those who help reinforce existing prejudices.