I said:
>>there are lots of non-pomotistas at Amherst, e.g., Bowles & Crotty.
Doug writes:
>What's a pomotista? Are there some characteristic markings? Are they armed
>and dangerous?
In the context of Amherst, a pomotista is a Wolf/Resnick
postmodernist-Marxist (or Marxist-postmodernist). As I understand their
view, it is that (1) there's no way to decide between neoclassical and
Marxist theory except via moral commitment (leaning toward epistemological
nihilism) and that (2) the Marxian view of the world involves seeing every
situation as overdetermined by economics, politics, class, race, gender,
etc., with none of the determinations or structures being more important
than any of the others.
Obviously, this is an excessively simplistic summary of their perspective.
And the second part is not a totally bad view, since it's good to break
with reductionism, determinism, single-factor explanations, assertions of
inevitability, etc. In fact, I'd agree with this summary of how one should
view any concrete situation. However, if one wants to dig below the surface
to try to get a deeper understanding of what's happening and what may
happen in the future, it's important to have sense of priority (e.g., that
capitalism is more important than the Rotarian International).
I should mention that many of these pomotistas continue to be politically
engaged in good left-wing causes. It's not just an intellectual/academic
thing.
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
