Date: Sat, 10 Jul 1999 18:02:52 +0200
From: Olaf.Rahmstorf-AT-uni-konstanz.de (Olaf Rahmstorf)
Subject: Re: Who pays for reading?


somebody who's voting for Clinton in the consequence of reading Marx must
have deeply misunderstood something.

Olaf


Kent wrote:

>Houston,
>You keep raising good questions. I would just like to turn the stick a
>bit...what could Bourdieu hurt?????  Is there anything in contempory
>American theory that can cultivate the dispositions to ask certain questions
>which are productive.  Yes he does demand a lot. I won't deny that, but
>banishing Bourdieu does what?  Is he the "evil" behind what you and I see
>around us?  Try going to a library with academic journals...they are all
>crap!!! I hate to be didactic, but I think in Reflexive Sociology he offers
>a politics which fits the historical moment. Both of terms of what can be
>taught and accomplished by academics.  This is the relationality of B.
>theory as even academic work is only suspended within a web of relations its
>not the proles against capitalists.  All this is a different practice, given
>historical changes, from the simple opposition which Marx offered us. Most
>of us share your tendencies, but to follow Nietzsche and
>Baudrillard...perhaps its time to just be Russian Soldiers who fall to the
>snow to wait...conserving energy.  We don't choose the moment we live, but
>it does provide us with dispositions to see some things and not others.  Not
>to be too existential, but when I teach I do become incredibly focused on
>the "problems" of society(thanks to my students), but I end up talking much
>more concretely about the daily practices.  The students are all against
>poverty, rainforests, exploitation in general, but that outrage can be
>summoned by Marx very easily but that is the end. Its the logic of political
>campaigns.  The students can as easily identify with lazy niggers, immoral
>politicians or the cynacism of the media as a simple cause and effect
>relationship.  Classic, or any,Marxism as taught to undergrads and grad
>students operates at this mechanic conscious level.  What B. offers is a way
>of seeing how the logic of daily practices and "being in the world"
>maintains the systems of power, rather than lecturing or sloganeering(which
>just makes them feel better). As bourdieu says it creates discomfort, a
>discomfort that might lead to some energy being directed fruitfully outward
>rather than feel good liberalism or Marxism which engenders practices such
>as joining Greenpeace, recylcing, lecturing to others, voting for Clinton or
>Gore, signing petitions for Richard Peltier. this is not to say they
>shouldn't be taught Marx. I think its more that they can't be what we want
>them to be, we don't have the power to transform them, dispositions are
>apperceptive...that is how they and we thru time(becoming) using some basic
>"logic" hold identity and being together. To again paraphrase the early B.
>we may want it to be differently, but it 'don't change the facts' and
>perhaps we need to use our energy more 'efficiently'.
>yikes
>
>
>>From: Houston Wood <hlwood-AT-aloha.net>
>>Reply-To: bourdieu-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
>>To: bourdieu-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
>>Subject: Who pays for reading?
>>Date: Fri, 09 Jul 1999 20:45:32 -1000
>>
>>Kent, you wrote: "you do have to have an understanding of Marx, Freud,
>>Boas,
>>Levi-Strauss etc....and given the pathetic state of american sociology I
>>would gladly accept his supposed "totalitariansim" because to mount an
>>objection you do have to have read....which HURTS NO ONE!!!!"
>>
>>I think the kind of expansive reading you are calling for requires immense
>>economic capital (exchanged for cultural capital). Producing a leisured
>>class (even the dominated fraction within the dominant class) with
>>sufficient freedom from economic necessity to have time to read so many
>>difficult texts--doesn't this hurt the working classes that must grow and
>>pick the food for us, produce the paper pulp for us, clean the toilets for
>>you and your colleagues there at Purdue, etcetera?
>>
>>I am reading _Distinction_ tonight and am struck by how what Bourdieu says
>>about the "aesthetic disposition" applies to the disposition with which we
>>read, e.g. Bourdieu. "Intellectual struggles," B writes, "the object of so
>>many pathetic manifestos" (54). We theorize on this listserve "without a
>>practical function" (with an aesthetic disposition), "freed from urgency,"
>>seeking understandings that are an "end in themselves."
>>
>>Next page: "Economic power is first and foremost a power to keep economic
>>necessity at arm's length" (55).  It requires economic power to read like
>>you advise us to read.  Does it "hurt someone" to have such power
>>concentrated in the hands of a few? I think it does.
>>
>>Am I being vulgar and anti-intellectual? Good god, I hope so.  Even though
>>I am producing just one more "pathetic manifesto."  And long to have the
>>leisure to read the list you prescribe. (But someone else will--already has
>>in the last day or two--prescribed a very different list of must reads.
>>Tell me, which list will secure for me the most distinction? I want to earn
>>the highest rate of return on my invested time.)
>>
>>
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>
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