There we go again! One of the points Steve Cullenberg made was that we can hardly afford to be fighting about these things. For example, we in RM, both personally and as a group notice when other conferences exclude us, or are not balanced in their plenaries, etc. Yet, as far as I know, none of us has ever attacked them for this, certainly not publicly, and not even privately--Doug Henwood knows that, for example, we discussed the socialist scholars conference in these terms. If there are mistakes made, on all sides, they should be occasions for discussions, not threats, public condemnations, and demonizing strategies. But I see signs of this type of stuff emerging again, in the context of this latest round of postings. A plea: stop this. The left has a tendency to behave as a group of Hyper people who, unable to find ways of putting their energies into productive and effective social change practices, turn their frustation inward and take up the favorite sport of sectarianism. This is not very productive. (Steve Cullenberg was speaking for himself, not for the organizing group as a whole, just as I speak for myself; the views about RM, etc. expressed by people are individual views, and a group, a project, a journal is always more than the positions, the merits, the mistakes, etc. of any one individual, steve cullenberg, or me, or anyone else. Doug, your reaction to Steve, in addition to being unfair to him--for I don't think he wrote what he did in the sectarian spirit you imputed to him--is unfair and problematic in that it turns into an attack on the journal as a whole. And the level of your critique is simplistic. There is both thinking and rethinking in the journal. For you to use the example of the plenaries to typecast the journal is simply to give free reign to the instincts you, and orthers, to attack! attack! attack! Attack who? us? for not having had balanced plenaries? Where is the public attack on other conferences that also do not have balanced plenaries, or even as balanced programs as the RM conference had? Not that I want to see this happen--but it seems to me that the criticism that the RM conference was bad because the plenaries were not balanced is more a cover for an attack on RM than a criticism about the lack of balance itself. And by the way, one simple reason for the lack of balance that I don't think anybody has yet explained, is the quite simple fact that we had some organizational difficulties. I would think people would appreciate the amount of work we did to have this, and other, conferences, and not use a disagreement with us, or a mistake by us, as a jumping basis for attacking us--or worse!) So: let's be kind, let's be friends, let's build together instead of tearing each other apart. Please! Antonio Callari >Stephen Cullenberg wrote: > >>Yet, we are not, and never have pretended to be, as ecumenical as say URPE >>and the RRPE. > >This then is Rethinking? My first reaction to the conference was too much >Re, not enough thinking, but now I'm even questioning the Re. > >A nonecumenical group of people who agree on fundamental things and view >plenaries as a form of preaching to a mixed crowd of converted and >unconverted? Did the presence of a large critical minority seem something >worthy of ackknowledging as something other than a personal attack? This is >exactly what I meant by the plenaries having shown signs of hardening into >orthodoxy, which as the postmodernists have taught us well, is defined >through exclusion. Is the devotion to polyvocality just another empty >signifier? > > >Doug > >-- > >Doug Henwood >Left Business Observer >250 W 85 St >New York NY 10024-3217 USA >+1-212-874-4020 voice +1-212-874-3137 fax >email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >web: <http://www.panix.com/~dhenwood/LBO_home.html> Antonio Callari E-MAIL: [EMAIL PROTECTED] POST MAIL: Department of Economics Franklin and Marshall College Lancaster PA 17604-3003 PHONE: 717/291-3947 FAX: 717/291-4369
