File spoon-archives/deleuze-guattari.archive/deleuze-guattari_1996/d-g_Jun.96, message 112


Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 23:27:08 -0400 (EDT)
From: Ted Striphas <striphas-AT-email.unc.edu>
Subject: Re: intellectuals and the state


Hi All,

For an interesting cultural studies "take" on D&G, you might want to 
check out Lawrence Grossberg's _We Gotta Get Out of This Place_ 
(Routledge, 1992)--particularly chapters one and fourteen.

By the way, I'm a bit unclear as to what is mean by mimicry of right 
populism.  Could someone clarify what is meant by that.  As I understand 
it, cultural studies, ideally, shies away from cultural populism (see S. 
Hall, "Notes on Deconstructing 'the Popular'").

Hope this isn't straying too far from the world of D&G.

TED




On Fri, 7 Jun 1996, Jon Beasley-Murray wrote:

> OK, I'm willing to rush and push with Dave on this one.  And I do think 
> that it is relevant to a deleuze-guattari discussion--D&G are, after all, 
> forever going on about intellectuals (or at least intellection) and the 
> state.
> 
> On Fri, 7 Jun 1996 owner-deleuze-guattari-digest-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU wrote:
> 
> > From: D Hugh-Jones <dash2-AT-hermes.cam.ac.uk>
> > Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 00:04:53 +0100 (BST)
> > Subject: Re: FYI/Sokal
> > 
> > May I first apologize in advance for pursuing a non-D&G-relevant thread. 
> > Anyway, my thought was: is it wise to divide into two camps, the Right 
> > libertarian cut-everything-but-the-military anti-critical-thought people 
> > and the Left keep-the-state-funding us people?
> > Gramsci said that the intellectuals weren't defined by what they did - 
> > because everyone thinks in some way, even in the most menial work. They 
> > were defined by a certain relationship with 'dominant' social classes, 
> > i.e. were elements in a historic bloc. If we accept this as a working 
> > hypothesis, then
> > 
> > 1. what relations does the complex body of cultural studies/theory have 
> > with the state and civil society? I'm not talking about simply economic 
> > relations, but about the way cultural studies/theory works at the moment 
> > in terms of producing - no specific targets here - a certain amount of 
> > 'empty signifiers' that circulate within an economy of discourse?
> 
> I think this is a good question (although the emptiness or otherwise of 
> the signifiers is irrelevant if not banal).
> 
> I think cultural studies and theory are quite distinct here in their 
> (imagined, perhaps) relations to the state, civil society and (I would 
> add) the "people."  Cultural studies in fact mimics or mirrors a certain 
> right-populism, attempting to construct its own left-Gramscian populism 
> (I have a paper in spoon's marxism archive, also available from the 
> culture-state web page, about this).
> 
> Theory, at least as D&G see or use it, would have no truck with such a 
> hegemonic project.
> 
> The specific historical and sociological differences between the French 
> and the US/British contexts are also, clearly, very important.  If theory 
> changes in no other way in its translation, it changes significantly in 
> terms of the different institutional arrangements it encounters and the 
> different ideologies (or, more simply, conceptions) of the relations 
> between state and civil society that are operative in the various 
> national contexts.
> 
> > 2. from within the position as it stands how do we analyse the possibilities?
> > Rosi Braidotti seems to have made something click with her use of D. in 
> > the cultural and political project of feminism, and her link with 
> > environmentalism (see interview pt. ll)
> 
> Braidotti's an odd one.  She came over to Duke sometime last year, and we 
> had a long argument in my apartment about her links with and willingness 
> to work with the (European super)state, which seems to be at odds with 
> much of her theoretical practice.  I think this is a contradiction 
> (productive, perhaps, for her), rather than a "use" of theory.
> 
> >  Dave Hugh-Jones
> 
> Take care
> 
> Jon
> 
> Jon Beasley-Murray
> Literature Program
> Duke University
> jpb8-AT-acpub.duke.edu
> http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~spoons
> 

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