Date sent: Wed, 10 Dec 1997 09:55:48 -0800
Send reply to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
From: James Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject:immanent ingenuousness
Devine, don't try to sound so innocent now. Anyone who read your last
missive on "immanent critique" will know it is you who
decided to take this slipshod-personal road. Then when someone turns
around and responds, you cry like a baby.
ricardo
After I tried to end this silly debate, Ricardo says that: I agree, but
there are too many disingenuous remarks on your part to let then go.
Hmm... I must have hit a raw nerve, for Ricardo is stooping to insults.
Look it up: "disingenuous" is a close cousin of "dishonest."
I initially thought that I'd compromise and skip all the merely technical
or trivial points, to keep this missive to the absolute shortest, but after
doing so, all I found were more insults. There's little or no content to
Ricardo's comment, so instead of responding to it, I'll ask him to simply
restate his position, starting from the beginning.
Crucially, Ricardo says I don't understand the notion of an "immanent
critique," but since doesn't explain what _he_ means by that phrase, I
don't know if I understand it or not.
Since a similar point came up in a discussion with Ajit, I will respond to
one relatively mild insult in order to clarify matters:
Ricardo writes... pilling [i.e., piling] one idea (or thinker) on top of
another is your trademark.
My method is one of reading all of the contributions I can concerning any
specific issue and trying to synthesize them. I find folks who stick to one
school's interpretation (e.g., Althusserian Structuralism or the Frankfurt
school) to be overly narrow. In fact, I think this fits with the so-called
"Germanic" method that I think old Karlos used.
I reread what spurred Ricardo to insult me here and discovered that he
didn't respond to the content at all, except that I use the word "add" (as
in adding "'crisis theory' and the critique of political economy" to Marx's
persistent anti-alienation theme). I never claimed that this one word
summed up Marx's method. Rather, it's shorthand.
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://clawww.lmu.edu/1997F/ECON/jdevine.html
"It takes a busload of faith to get by." -- Lou Reed.
