At 10:04 AM 11/1/96, Antonio Callari wrote: >Pomo has great practical, political implications and that is why people >like me and Steve and Blair and Medley like it and work with it--at least >that's why I work with it, not to run away from political activism, but to >facilitate it. See, all of you guys who insist on the purity of your >analytical positions and preformed, non interactive, political strategies >and preferences, I used to be like you--so i know you pretty well. The only >thing is that, unless I wanted to preach to the converted, i found the >rethoric (I mean it in its positive sense) quite ineffective. The only way >I could talk to people, establish mutually respectful positions with the >community people I work with, was to recognize that, however much I might >have wanted them to already have a class consciousness and an appropriate >political strategy, their agendas were either different from mine, or even >if it shared significant objectives with my class approach, was formulated >using different identities, processed through different criteria, etc.. So >actually organizing people, working with people, as opposed to preaching at >them (and preaching can be done nicely, it does not have to be >obnoxious--Doug's radio show, although I don't hear it where I am, I >suspect is a form of t/preaching) requires that you negotiate with them, >beginning with where they are, treating them with respect, even being >willing to learn a few things from them, as I have, along the way. The >political value of pomo is that it opens up the field of identities and >takes them seriously Old language: "The boss is screwing you. Organize and fight back." New language: "The metanarratives are all broken. Liberate yourself through freeplay in the deliciously slippery world of discourse!" This is progress? Insofar as what we call "pomo" - loosely but still usefully - is the theoretical basis of identity politics - another one of those loose but useful concepts - it would tend to confirm and reinforce the social fragmentation that characterizes the U.S. today. I don't think this is a very good thing. It provides a theoretical rationale for believing that people can speak authoritatively only about that which they have personally experienced; to steal Teresa Ebert's nice forumulation, it replaces notions of collectivity with intersubjectivity. Now one of the reasons for this whole pomo adventure was the failure of the Old Left to address theoretically or practically issues of race, nationality, gender, sexual identity, etc. Certainly there is a good deal of merit to that assertion. But one can take it to far. What white-dominated organization cared as much about the plight of African-Americans in the 1920s and 1930s as the CPUSA? Even today, if you pick up a paper as orthodoxly Trotskyist as Workers Vanguard you will find all kinds of material on the oppression of women in Afghanistan, "racist cop terror" in the U.S., and the heritage of apartheid in South Africa. Stephen Cullenberg wrote: >Specifically and telegraphically, at least four points emerge from >Derrida's Specters of Marx (1) The proper names "Marx" and/or "Marxism" >have always already been plural nouns, despite their grammatical form, and >despite the fact that they have been understood as if they were rigid >designators; (2) "communism" (in its own pluralities) is not the same as >"Marxism"; (3) both communism and Marxism are historically sited, situated, >inflected, mediated by particular traditions and histories; (4) the proper >name "Marx" is -- in a certain sense -- entirely uncircumventable. > What does this mean (and by asking this, I no doubt reveal a Second Wave attachment to "meaning")? That by using the words Marx and Marxism we signify many things? That there is "Marx" the historical figure, whom we know not as a fleshly person but only through texts, and there is "Marxism," a mode of thought and a political practice with almost as many forms as adherents? Well, duh. Do we need a fancy theory draped in a veil of incomprehensibility to make such obvious points? 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: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> web: <http://www.panix.com/~dhenwood/LBO_home.html>
