Antonio Callari wrote: >Doug, your reaction to >Steve, in addition to being unfair to him--for I don't think he wrote what >he did in the sectarian spirit you imputed to him--is unfair and >problematic in that it turns into an attack on the journal as a whole. And >the level of your critique is simplistic. There is both thinking and >rethinking in the journal. For you to use the example of the plenaries to >typecast the journal is simply to give free reign to the instincts you, and >orthers, to attack! attack! attack! Attack who? us? for not having had >balanced plenaries? Well, yes. But I'm really not doing this in the spirit of attack. I'm saying that there should be a conversation happening that's not. The plenaries were full of attacks: by Judith Butler, on (nonexistent) "neoconservative Marxists"; by Sandra Harding, on intellectual rigor; by Vandana Shiva, on Rene Descartes; by Roger Burbach, on me. And Antonio, I believe you told one of the Indian rebels that her criticisms were "disrespecting [your] labor." If that's the case, that's not my idea of how political intellectuals should talk to each other. Did you talk to her about Indian Marxism and the critique of postmodernism it's led her to? >Where is the public attack on other conferences that >also do not have balanced plenaries, or even as balanced programs as the RM >conference had? I wasn't pleased at all with the way Monthly Review held panels on postmodernism at the Socialist Scholars Conference with no postmodernists present. I told Ellen Wood and the rest of the MR staff that that was very bad. I didn't do that publicly because the subject never came up, but I'll do it now. One of the reasons the RM conference was a success, I think, was because of all the interesting ferment at the margins. That should appeal to a postmodernist, no? A rebellious, counterhegemonic movement constituted by the exclusioary practices of the conference authorities? >So: let's be kind, let's be friends, let's build together instead of >tearing each other apart. Please! Antonio, more tearing apart is done by people sitting on unitary panels, or writing in univocal journals, criticizing people and texts who aren't there, and maybe don't even exist, than when these conversations, rare as they are, happen. As I remember Butler's talk, she denounced all sorts of bad orthodox Marxists who seem to want to send women back to the kitchen and queers back into the closet. That's tearing apart. The same things happen in gatherings of the "orthodox" who caricature "postmodernism" (and I know that it's a complex and diverse assemblage that sails under this banner) as something sillier than it really is. 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: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> web: <http://www.panix.com/~dhenwood/LBO_home.html>
