Date: 	Fri, 24 Jan 1997 19:57:22 -0500
From: Kenneth MacKendrick <kenneth.mackendrick-AT-utoronto.ca>
Subject: Re: General Question



> 

> Scott Johnson, your summary of the relevance of Habermas is
> exemplary, and I am in complete agreement with you.  I further
> solidarize with you in opposition to MacKendrick's
> diaper-droppings.

To clarify my position - none of my diaper-droppings were in opposition.  
Habermas's analysis is left intact despite all of my complaints (valid or invalid).  
The theory of communicative action needs to be pushed further - "brushed against 
the grain" if you will.  Habermas's theory stands head and shoulders above most 
of the stuff out there right now - i'm thinking of political hermeneutics, analytic 
philosophy, postmodernism, and pragmatism.
> 
>  But as it happens, my ultimate ambition
> is to inject the heritage of Hegelian Marxism -- Lukacs, the
> Frankfurters, James, etc. -- into Black Studies, Africana
> philosophy, and the problematic of the race-class nexus in order
> to engage in mortal combat with the reactionary ideology that
> pervades this arena from beginning to end.  As I always ask: why
> Heidegger, why not Marx?

Queer theory could also use an injection and vice versa - the analysis of sexuality 
and gender provides several interesting correctives/insights to the Hegelian 
Marxian model.
> 
> PS: I am not an academic.  I don't take guff from piss-ant grad
> students in their 20s whose horizon of human existence does not
> extend beyond assembling their footnotes for their dissertations.
> Words to the wise.

words that are always welcome, even though i love footnotes,
ken