From: "kent strock" <sigmund5-AT-hotmail.com> Subject: Re: Bourdieu and Reformism Date: Sun, 11 Jul 1999 12:57:18 PDT > >kent strock wrote: > >>Yet I sense an Idealism or a negation of history in holding these >>figures up as the archetype of the True Marxism. Ya, it would have >>been nice if the Marxists hadn't given up the students, but they >>did, and it was the practice of Marxism, not theory that led to this. > >The practice of Marxism? Dennis & I practice Marxism, and we don't do that. I find this out of context quotation unfair and in the Derridian sense violent. Your response, in leaving out the questions raised previous to it which doesn't address the philosophical/textual questions I raised. The point, which you aptly demonstrated, is that this not about intentionality. You can intend or do what you want, and have very good reasons for it. What I was addressing were issues of textuality, time and meaning which Derrida has raised, and which I think Boudieu respects, but which too many Marxist dismiss as ideology or not practical, without taking his insights of deconstruction seriously. > >> A more concrete historical anaylsis must acknowledge that these >>events had a profound effect on Marxists of the lineage you site who >>realized this discourse wasn't doing the trick..I am thinking here >>particularly of Baudrillard, to a lesser extent perhaps Foucault. > >For all the professed anti-Marxism of Foucault and Foucaultians, I >think there are a lot of affinities between F & M. But that's another >story. I agree there are affinities, as their are with every set of thinkers you want to match up. >Baudrillard doesn't understand capital at all, which is one way to >avoid mirroring it. His debt essay ><http://www.ctheory.com/e31-global_debt.html> is a hilarious, utterly >demented as a reading of the political economy of finance. Evidently >he's never gotten a call from a collection agency. > >>This raises an issue that I am uncomfortable in Bourdieu text: he >>maintains a discourse of scarcity; a discourse by which Baudrillard >>shows that Marxism is merely the mirror image of captialism. > >I don't know a Marxist who doesn't think scarcity is socially >constucted, and doesn't have a critique of capitalist notions of >scarcity. After that, they bifurcate into those who'd aim to ramp up >industrial production and those who think the whole social/material >sphere has to be transformed. But even the "brown" Marxists (as >opposed to the "green" ones) would want fewer consumer durables and >more social forms of consumption and investment. Even orthodox CP >types have a critique of the calculating bourgeois monad. > >Marx and Marxism are criticized for their obsession with production >and scarcity and all the categories of capital. I'll concede that >there are mathematical and value fundamentalist types of Marxists who >don't distance themselves from capital's categories enough for my >taste. But the names that Dennis mentioned don't do that. And that's >the kind of Marxism I see in Bourdieu. > >>At a purely phenomenolgical level Baudrillard and Baitille, ring >>incredibly more true in understanding the obscene affluence/exess(no >>merely monetary) of contemporary American capitalism, than >>Bourdieu's scarcity discourse. > >Evidence of the success of capital's ideology that you should see >only the excess and not the scarcity that excess creates by its side. >In their obsession with media excess, for example, Wired editors and >some cultural critics forget the fact that half the population of the >world has never made a phone call. I live in New York City, certainly >an epicenter of excess, but I'd only have to walk about 2 miles to be >in one of the poorest neighborhoods in the U.S., with health and >social statistics worse than "Third World" averages. In fact, one of >the richest neighborhoods in the U.S. (Fifth Av in the 90s) is next >to one of the poorest (East Harlem). The polarization of incomes >within nations and especially between nations is the greatest it's >ever been. > > >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:dhenwood-AT-panix.com> >web: <http://www.panix.com/~dhenwood/LBO_home.html> >********************************************************************** >Contributions: bourdieu-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu >Commands: majordomo-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu >Requests: bourdieu-approval-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu _______________________________________________________________ Get Free Email and Do More On The Web. Visit http://www.msn.com ********************************************************************** Contributions: bourdieu-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu Commands: majordomo-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu Requests: bourdieu-approval-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
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