Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 23:22:33 -0500
From: Mary Murphy&Salstrand <ericandmary-AT-earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: marxist grand narrative - the return?


steve.devos-AT-krokodile.com wrote:
> 
> Hugh

On that basis I take it that no intellectual work has any validity...
and that political action is bound to fail.

You are such a tory Hugh.
__________________________________

Hugh:

I too am throwing down the gauntlet.  

I'm no expert on British politics, but I think the American equivalent
of this is being called either a Dixiecrat or a born again Republican.  

I don't think you are either of those things, Hugh, but I think you make
for an interesting paradox.  I don't know of anyone as committed as you
have been to participating on this site, yet you seem to argue against
your own participation by what you say here.

You philosophize against philosophy, seem to think there is some kind of
firewall between thought and action, that any form of praxis is a
delusion, and that those of us who think theory is important, who
discuss issues at a certain level of abstraction are, to quote the bard,
something like:

"Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot fighting in the captain's tower
While calypso singers laugh at them and fishermen hold flowers"

(dylan)

While I can appreciate your feelings about Marx, that after Stalin there
can be no resurrection, I also think that without theory, reflection,
thought, discourse the left is dead. To speak of pure action the way you
do, one would have to be either God or a fascist at heart. The current
problem with politics today doesn't seem to be that people are thinking
too much! Does it really seem that way to you? Or are you just taking a
stance with us?

So here is the gauntlet I am laying down. Would you be willing to
discuss Empire critically with us here?  To evaluate what AN and MH have
to say both as theory and in its implications for action? Or will you
simply continue to berate our talk as dark mutterings when from your own
privileged position something else is called for, the terrible burden
being that you can't explain what that is to us without using language
yourself and therefore descending with us deep into the dark and mire.
The intractable night.

That is the paradox. I don't think you are a tory, but I say you can't
be above language and continue to use language simultaneously.  And I
don't accept the argument this is some kind of weird paralogy you are
laying down on us, or some newfangled form of a libidinal economy.

Are you really more radical than we are or simply afraid to enter into
the debate? Or is this your way of defending the "in-fans" inside
yourself who cannot speak and still remains defenseless after all these
years?

with love,

eric