Reflections of Mckee: Introduction

I tend to agree with Gromm. The issue of fragmentation that Mckee mentions was the most interesting point for me as well. It reminded me a lot of the issues concerning gay rights and the way it is being compared to the African American Civil Rights Movement. There has always been some tension between the two groups over the comparison. One group feeling like the comparison is legitimate and should be a uniting force and the other group feeling the need to distance themselves as much as possible from it. It is interesting which commonalities get pushed to the forefront. I mean which identities people prefer to cling to and which ones get dismissed as being irrelevant or superficial.

Mckee also makes a point of saying that this book is written in a "postmodernist" analytical framework. From my Mass Media and Pop Culture class, I am well aware of the idea, and I thought I liked it until Mckee used it to make the claim that negative words could be "reclaimed." He states that he purposefully uses historically derogatory terms in order to redefine them in a more positive light using the postmodernist prospective. I find this problematic and dangerous. I hope he explains more later. But as of now, I don't buy the claim that the connotation of words can simply be transformed by misuse. I recognize that words are simply signifiers. They only have as much meaning as we give them. But I worry about who is in the driver's seat. Like Marx and Gramsci, I worry that it will always be the people in a position of dominace that will have the power of "reclaiming," or "redefining" these words. Even when Blacks use the term "nigg**" or Gays use the term, queer, the word never truly loses its original meaning. I dont think it ever becomes a positive term. It just takes on a different cultural attitude, one that helps the group deal with the trauma of what the word originally meant.