From: "bob scheetz" <rscheetz-AT-cboss.com>
Subject: Re: tom wolfe-epictetus-frankfurt
Date: Tue, 2 May 2000 22:46:57 -0400


Christopher,
     thanks for yer reply
... nice topic for the eve of kent state, no?

This year's speaker is to be an electronic mumia.
I guess we know what would be wolfe's opinion
of this kinda  lumpen-loving faker-leftist bourgeois liberalism;
but, can we imagine adorno's, an any less towering contempt?

"Man in Full" construes this form under the aspect of farik fanon,
trivialization of wretched-of-earth rage into football superstar rapist, and
the pol (cf jesse championing the illinois high-school hooligans) who
opportunistically demagogues this criminality.

Anyway, yer "friendly-fascist" thesis, i agree,
has been long the accepted wisdom on the left;
but, still seems really hard to square with this novel.
And wouldn't it be our shame to miss recognizing
an authentic postmodern consciousness,
a liberating and dignifying mirroring?
Conrad's hands unmistakably mark him for a prole
...as the epictetus is clearly meant for
an authentic exploited-class consciousness,
(comradeship, resistance, struggle,... )
rising to a kinda salvific everyman religion.

...what fascism?


thanks,
bob




----- Original Message -----
From: Christopher Gunn <1k1mgm-AT-kuhub.cc.ukans.edu>
To: <frankfurt-school-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, May 02, 2000 1:20 AM
Subject: Re: tom wolfe-epictetus-frankfurt


> At 08:51 PM 5/1/00 -0400, bob scheetz <rscheetz-AT-cboss.com> wrote:
> >discussion last wk-end over significance in wolfe's "man in full"
> >of the striking fact that his conrad-hero issues from 60's flower culture
> >...after all is tom wolfe be our authentic merkan frankfurter?
> >...are rad-chic, mau-mauing,...bonfire, man in full,
> >frankfurter masterpieces?
> >is there a frankfurter line on wolfe?
>
> Wolfe is a swine and his ideas skirt the edges of small-f fascism, which
in
> a way is a shame since (in my opinion, anyway, speaking as a reformed
> journalist) he's a tremendously talented writer, one who as a prose
stylist
> has certainly influenced me a great deal.
>
> I haven't looked into the origins of Wolfe's ideas in great detail but
> fundamentally he takes what sounds in some ways like a Frankfurter
critique
> of mass culture and EMBRACES the resulting pattern of domination as a
> useful way of keeping the unwashed masses in line.  In his view this is
> much better than suppression by brutal Cossacks, secret police, etc., and
> results in less overall destruction than pogroms, race riots, and the
other
> things proles will do if left un-entertained.  Overall, I can think of
> almost nothing more diametrically *opposed* to the basic Frankfurt
> critique;  if there's affinity, it's the 0-degrees, 180-degrees linearity
> of total contradiction.
>
> If you're confused by Wolfe, you should try to track down one of his
purest
> socio-political statements, which was published ca. 1975 in a mainstream
> mid-cult magazine (Atlantic, Harpers, something of that sort) but it was
> also the introduction to a book by a man named Arnold Beichman called
_Nine
> Lies About America_.  It would probably be easier at this juncture to find
> the book than to track down the article.  (This book is itself kind of
> interesting;  Beichman was a former reporter for the leftish P.M.
newspaper
> who took a right turn and wound up writing a grim and utterly humorless
> take on the Radical Chic theme.  'Grim and humorless' may even be Wolfe's
> words from the introduction.  He obviously holds Beichman in contempt but
> is willing to have some fun with him, too, in addition to getting a
> political point across.)
> Christopher W. Gunn
> cgunn-AT-socialrelations.net                318-474-5226
> Social Relations Laboratory   www.socialrelations.net
> 3910 Jande St.                Lake Charles, LA  70605
>