Date: Fri, 18 Oct 1996 00:34:40 -0800
From: djones-AT-uclink.berkeley.edu (rakesh bhandari)
Subject: Re: The retreat of the "intellectual"


Antonio quotes from *Bad Subjects*, put out by fellow graduate students
here at UCBerkeley

>. And so the left has also come to glorify the position of the marginal
>and the victimized, because such a position, even if it is powerless and
>ineffective, can at least claim the moral 'purity' of non-participation in
>the offenses of the mainstream or dominant society. <

In *Marx's Theory of Scientific Knowledge* Patrick Murray comments on how
the morally superior critic, aside from being unable to account for his own
purity, is as prone to seek the high ground of non-participation as to
attempt to impose his morally superior vision upon the corrupted masses.
Marxism degenerates into either a theoretical refuge or a totalitarian
fantasy.  Murray's analysis is a very important attempt to think through
what the immanence of critique entails. It has provoked much rethinking on
my part.

(Two good reviews of Murray's book would be George McCarthy's in Philosophy
of the Social Sciences, vol 20, no 4 [Dec 1990] and Irving Adler's in
Nature, Society and Thought vol 4, no 1/2 [1991].)

At the same time, it is important to remember Wm J Blake's warning that
Marxists can't be so anxious to bring down the capitalist flock of birds
that we try to use  shots in the mainstream left's locker. Some of them
simply don't fit the Marxian rifles.

Rakesh

PS I think the title of this journal is taken from a phrase in one of
Althusser's essays on ideology (though shouldn't one endeavor to become a
nastay, instead of merely bad, subject?).  There has been a serious debate
about whether the Althusserian scientist maintains an elitist position
vis-a-vis the "good subjects", those who have been hailed or whatever.
Jacques Ranciere developed such a criticism in the early 70s and this
criticism has recently been developed by Margaret Majumdar, 1995. Althusser
and the End of Leninism. London: Pluto.