Yoshie F. wrote:
> > Libido is essential, not optional, in politics. What turns them on? You
have to have a feel for that. Otherwise, you don't get it, even> > if you
have all the facts at your disposal.
Fantasy, too, is indispensable. To be sure, it's been either maligned> >
or neglected by many in the Marxist tradition, but there have been> >
socialists who recognized its role:
> > Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Eduardo Galeano, Jean Genet, José Carlos>
> Mariátegui, Oscar Wilde, etc.
Notice that none except Wilde (who was Irish) comes from the
English-speaking countries. No wonder the Anglo-American Marxists> > have
been the weakest link. You look at Marxists in the USA, the UK, > Canada,
and Australia, and you realize . . . there is no sex appeal here!
>
Yoshie, we need a Party of a New Type, one with fun !
CB
^^^^^^^^^
Yoshie Furuhashi
Wed, 18 Mar 1998 19:19:38 -0500
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----------------
Hugh,
>Any literal-mindedness I might display is the result of hard labour
and>discipline on my part -- it's an excellent quality that saves an
awful>amount of misunderstanding, and one that Hegel had to a surpassing
extent.
Hegel isn't very seductive to women who might possibly become interested in
Marx.
-clip-
Yoshie
M-TH: listen,vanguard
Charles Brown
Thu, 19 Mar 1998 10:46:50 -0500
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On Hegel and seduction, didn't he indicate that comedy is superior to
tragedy ? Couldn 't that be helpful in coming up with something that women
of color , lesbian and thespian, might find fun ? We learn from Antigone.
Now we will learn from Bessie Smith.
We need a party of a new type, a mardi gras of the people, a Detroit
cabaret. Communists cannot rally workers to revolution with the dullness of
the classic approach. It is time for our seriousness, which has
accomplished so much, to turn into its opposite.
This would be in the spirit of the Boston Tea Party. A masquerade ball
that crossdressers could enjoy. White men dressed as Red men, Sisters With
Voices, dressed in Black and joys.
When we have everybody laughing and rolling in the aisles, having a
roaring good time, dancing (everyone wiggling their hips) and singing,
reading poetry until the wee hours of the morning, we reveal ourselves as
philosophers, thaxists.
Our new comradly revelers will say ."I want to learn how you do this."
Then we could discuss a few paradoxes , why the insides the outside in
this Cline bottle; and show how they are contradictions and quote Hegel's
craggly melodies, putting all to sleep perchance to dream , of idealism and
materialism.
Then wake up the next morning and prepare a feast; and plan a holiday,
weeklong of this party of a new type, this comedic mode of seduction. And
read Engels' Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. Keep doing it and keep
doing it; and change it based on what the women of color like.
Has anyone seen Angela Davis' new book on _The Blues Tradition and Black
Feminism: Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday_ ? Now those women knew
how to party. The type of thing women might like. We can play their CDs at
our party of a new type. The working class knows how to party better than
the bourgeoisie, because they need more powerful forms of transcending
alienation(sadness) than the bourgeoisie. Hegel ain't got nothin' on
Speakeasy philosophers when it comes to lifting comedy up over tragedy.
C.B.
=20
