Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 22:37:27 -0500
From: "Jim W. Jaszewski" <jjazz-AT-hwcn.org>
Subject: Re: Postmodernism: Materialist?



(This guy has a LOT of trouble addressing any point _I_ made; but then,
this List is an 'academic exercise', isn't it..?)


"Ben B. Day" wrote:
> 
> > ... while much of 'postmodernism'
> > (despite whatever it HAS to offer that is truly insightful or new) is
> > just the latest installment of bourgeois reaction against marxist
> > clarity...
> 
> Well, if we take Lyotard as the spokesman of postmodernism (since he
> brought the term to philosophy), this accusation would be totally off-
> base.

But what we are talking about is the whole spectrum of 'Post', isn't it?
Not just one of the more illustrious exemplars.



> Marcuse, on the other hand, has a spotless record of supporting student
> movements and the working class, and he criticized Adorno for the
> incident mentioned above (which I think Horkheimer was involve with as
> well).

'Academic' marxist pessimism seems endemic -- which is one of the
reasons I ask you again: Is most 'Postmodernism' at least inherently
materialist (forget the rest for now; we'd only get bogged down as this
is showing)?


 
> In short, although it seems fashionable for various schools of
> philosophy today to lambaste one another as being talking heads for
> the bourgeoisie, I'm very skeptical of the claim that there is something
> /about/ these philosophies that promotes capitalism or advocates
> its overturn in any given situation (this is also the claim that Adorno
> levels against Heidegger, and that Habermas levels against Gadamer -
> that phenomenology/hermeneutical philosophies of history lead to
> political quietism).

I would think that it would be quite crystal clear by now that any mode
of thought which does not explicitly or implicitly posit a
post-capitalist reality, objectively supports the opposite of that.



> Even though I suspect that all of these thinkers
> are revolutionary, in that they would advocate a revolutionary change
> from the present social structures, whenever a real movement rises up
> in opposition to the status quo, the incredibly complex decision of
> whether one is to support it as something that will bring about a
> better world simply cannot be made based on the broad dictums of a
> school's philosophy.

Again I ask: Which are materialist (for starters)?





> Even a Marxist is faced with an extremely difficult
> decision in whether to support a self-proclaimed Marxist uprising, and
> this awareness was extremely kean especially in the time that most of
> these schools of philosophy are coming out of...

Any marxist worth his or her salt knows that, *whatever* the
circumstances, you support the struggle of the workers to free
themselves.

All else is, uh, 'academic'...



Jim W. Jaszewski.