From: "Forstater, Mathew" Again, I want to emphasize that most of the important insights IMHO had already been made, either by critical theorists, Black Studies scholars, interpretive social scientists, et al. And many of the insights were of course made by Marxists, such as Voloshinov (Marxism and the Philosophy of Language), Vygotsky (Thought and Language), and Raymond Williams (Marxism and Literature). Much of this was in response to traditional historical materialism, the very hardcore economic determinism of Plekhanov and others. The irony of it all is that what is greatly misunderstood is that these authors (Voloshinov et al.) are really *more* materialist in a sense, because what they are arguing is that language and thought and consciousness are also part of the material world,
^^^^^ CB: Raymond Williams argues this point well in _Marxism and Literature_, using the Theses on Feuerbach. Marx says that in all materialism "hitherto" before Marxism treated the "subject" (in the Hegelian sense) as contemplative, not active. V , V and Williams also activate the subject relative to the objectivism of socalled vulgar materialists. Christopher Caudwell http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Caudwell http://webpages.dcu.ie/~sheehanh/hsheehan/caudwell.htm makes this point before Williams in the Preface to _Illusion and Reality_ ^^^^^ something that is lost in the traditional (false) separation of the 'real world' and the 'world of ideas' in much historical materialism. It was also part of the project of those who rejected the traditional idea that racial domination and patriarchy could be simplistically reduced to class. One example of an important emphasis of postmodernism, e.g., would be the critique of Eurocentrism. Of course, this was not original to postmodernism, but it probably did introduce this critique to new audiences. Ditto the related critique of modern 'Western' science, positivism, 'value-free' scientific objectivity, etc. By the way, at least one postmodern economist, Ted Burczak, has made the distinction between nihilist postmodernism and hermeneutic postmodernism, embracing the latter. mat raghu: >More specifically what do you think are the most important insights of post-modernism? _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
