Date: Wed, 2 Oct 96 13:47:16 CST
Subject: from one newcomer to another


On Tue, 1 Oct 1996 13:08:53 -0500 (EST, vpiercy wrote:

 
> I am interested in literary, philosophical and sociological stuff,
>finding my positions somewhere between Laclau and Mouffe, Marx and Raymond
>Williams and Stuart Hall.  That puts me somewhere in the Cultural Studies
>camp, an academically oriented bourgeois son of the working class.  

I personally make a disctinction between Williams and Hall on the 
one hand, and Laclau and Mouffe on the other.  Hall's and William's 
cultural marxism has imporatnt relevance to political praxis as 
well as to some of the important problems that Marxist theory has 
to grapple with, while the post-marxism of Laclau and Mouffe presents a 
rather unsatisfactory account of agency, identity, radical  democracy 
and social movement, among other things.  However, I was reading in New 
Statesman and Society a few months ago ( or is it a few weeks? I lost track 
of time) about Tony Blair's (the British Labor Party leader) meeting with 
the British central left intellectuals.  In the same story thay said Hall 
welcomed the removal of the clause on the abolition of private 
ownership from the Labor party program, as well as Blair's attempt to go 
beyond the traditional trade union base of the Labor Party.  I found the 
positions quite disturbing, but then again, I am very unfamiliar with all 
the contexual particularities of British politics. Can anyone enlighten 
us about Hall's position in the present British politics?    


>  What do people think of Stanley Aronowitz's _The Crisis in Historical
>Materialism_ (U. of Minnesota Press, 2nd ed.)?  Colin MacCabe and Cornel
>West seem to like it quite a bit, but I know that there are quite a few
>people, considering the Sokal affair, who think Aronowitz is a chump, and
>a "smelly" chump at that.  Is his TCIHM a crock?   


It's an interesting coincidence- I have just started reading TCIHM.  
I am too early in the book to make any conclusive comment yet- but
so far it sounds good.  There are very insightful observations about the
crisis of classical Marxism;  at this point there is an inclination toward
Frankfurt shcool, looks like a turning point from Adorno's negative dialectic 
to Derridas "Difference."  But I will be able to tell more in a few 
days.    


>2.  What of voices on the Left such as MacCabe or West?  Or Henry Louis
>Gates?  Or Edward Said?  The first two like Stanley's stuff, but why?  Are
>there any reasons that they would publicly endorse his book?  And the
>second two, while ethnically inflecting their critiques, are academic,
>some might say elitist.  Would you say that they just aren't Marxist? or
>that they are only mildly Marxist sympathetic? and that therefore we
>should be very suspicious of them and their opinions?  Don't they flirt
>too much with Foucauldian and Derridean procedures and terms in their
>analyses?  It's hard to read Said without seeing the poststructural
>influence--if muted by his humanism.  And Gates on the "signifying monkey"
>seems indebted to Derrida for his analysis of representation and racism. 


I am familiar with West's neo-Gramscian position, but my pal 
Sean warned me about his participation in the million man march.  I think
West's politico-intellectual position represents some form of combination
among neo-Gramsciaism, a particular reading of Foucault, left-pragmatism, 
Black cultural studies, and liberation theology.  Gates, in the literary 
circle, is known as a pragmatist, but I don't his work enough 
(although I read COLORED PEOPLE) to make a conclusive srtatement.  Said is 
appreciative, yet critical of Foucault.  Note his critique of Foucault
for undertheorizing resistance.  Said also explores the "Gramsci
question" of hegemony in his analysis of cultural imperialism and 
orientalism.  Although Said is critically engaged with the Marxist 
discourse, his work definitely underinvestigates the class
dimension of cultural imperialism.  See the brilliant critique by Aijaz 
Ahmed, the Indian Marxist literay critique/social theorist.  My feeling 
is that although Said is not a Marxist, he is definitely a leading 
oppositional intellectual that we can work with.








Manjur Karim



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