Subject: Re: Leibnitz
Date: Mon, 14 May 2001 19:02:02 +0100


Geoffrey,

> _Relative_ autonomy - which is not a quantitive notion (i.e. it doesn't mean
> 'more autonomous than most') but a structural one. The kinds of things I can
> mean and make happen as an academic - like the kinds of things I can mean
> and make happen in the other positions I occupy - depend upon my grasping
> the relative autonomy of that particular space. This is not at all to
> imagine myself basking in exemption from the movements of capital; rather
> recognising that such critical engagement as I can have depends on
> understanding the position from which I want to have it. Or, to return to
> the terms I was using: when I was young I wished the world to change and I
> wished it really really hard. Now I still wish that, and recognise that my
> capacity to cause it to change involves processes more involuted than
> wishing.
>
> My interest in trying to SEPARATE the critical force of theory from the
> force which is ONLY disciplinary (or, only an expression of my capacity for
> domination) isn't, i don't think, particularly craven. The rules -
> regularities in this case, which is why I called them descriptive rules - I
> speak about are the rules that appear to govern Bourdieu's practice of
> intervention - what holds together a movement from 'The Disenchantment of
> the World' to 'La Misere du monde'. They don't necessarily govern mine,
> although, as I say, I like what I gather to be the 'rules' of his movement
> between thinking and political activity, and that I find them a useful
> resource for thinking my own movements between the two.
>

Yes, I can see the force of this. But from where I am standing -- that is, as
someone outside the university -- the issues that concern you have little
relevance when to call even the smallest aspect of some aspects of academic
practice in question calls down on me a heap of abuse; i.e. given the fact of
having no academic capital at all, it is absurd to charge me with abuse of
academic power.

Regards
Simon



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