Date: Sun, 08 Sep 2002 13:08:39 -0400
From: Lou Caton <lcaton-AT-wisdom.wsc.ma.edu>
Subject: intellectuals and fashion


I've been following the sometimes heated debate regarding the status or
value of Marcuse's insights for the 90s and beyond.  It struck me that
if Marcuse isn't studied much anymore, it may have to do with current
cultural factors rather than his ideas.  Is Adorno, for example, studied
that much more than Marcuse?  Isn't it the case that numerous other
important thinkers of the past are slowly becoming forgotten?  Who
reads/teaches R.D. Laing?  Norman O. Brown?  Sartre?  Sure, one sees a
few books devoted to these writers occasionally each year, but their
influence seems to be diminishing.  I wonder if many will read de Man in
twenty years.  I had an advisor ten or so years ago in grad school who
said that the academic climate made it all but impossible for someone to
write a serious dissertation on existentialism any more. That doesn't
seem right somehow.  It seems to me that the demise of an interest in
Marcuse is part of the American cultural marketplace of ideas.  Now we
want to hear from Lacan, Derrida, and Zizek.  There's only so much room
on a bookstore shelf, I guess.

cheers,
Lou Caton
Westfield State College
lcaton-AT-wisdom.wsc.ma.edu