File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1996/96-11-03.020, message 89


Date: Sat, 2 Nov 1996 12:04:37 -0600 (CST)
From: Chegitz Guevara <mluziett-AT-shrike.depaul.edu>
Subject: M-I: Re: Should we let up on the pomos? 


On Sat, 2 Nov 1996, Gary MacLennan wrote:

> > Also, we should be careful not to aid the right-wing crusade against
> > "left wing academia", who want to close down "women studies" and
> > "african studies" etc. and reduce funding for all studies that cannot
> > aid capital accumulation. Post-modernist marxists may be silly and at
> > times reactionary, but they are progressives in their own ways, and
> > when they are attacked from the right it is our duty to defend them. 
> >
> > Yours, 
> > Per

A distinction needs to sharply drawn between pomo and multiculturalism. 
While pomos often employ multicultural rhetoric, they are hardly anything
besides, white and advantadged. Multiculturalism was the attempt to
broaden "discourse." Pomo obscures it. Multiculturalism arose out of the
struggles of the sixties (and has much deeper roots going back to W.E.B. 
DuBois' work in the 1890's) to have the history of those besides great
white males included. Pomo is about reducing everything to language, and
context, and the denial of reality. 

Of course when the right attacks post modernism, they do so for their own
cynical reasons. They want to use it to attack multiculturalism. But we
can defend MC without defending pomo, which is an obscurist, defeatist,
and ultimately reactionary philosophy. 

Put the bastards to the sword.

> Yet we should try and keep some of the gains especially those Per refers
> to. 

There have been no gains from pomo. Only defeats.
 
> regards
> 
> Gary

Marc, the "Chegitz," Luzietti
personal homepage: http://shrike.depaul.edu/~mluziett
political homepage: http://shrike.depaul.edu/~mluziett/chegitz.html

SPOON!



     --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---



   

Driftline Main Page

 

Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005