Date: Tue, 5 Nov 1996 20:20:50 -0500 (EST)
From: Justin Schwartz <jschwart-AT-freenet.columbus.oh.us>
Subject: Re: M-I: reply to Justin Schwartz



Jon B-M and George Yudice seem to propose, with variying degrees of
clarity and coherence, the following two propositions:

1. The current situation is different from what Marxists (and others) have
projected, and postmodernuism is an attempt to understand it;l it should
be welcome, or at least understood in this spirit, and

2. Post modernists deserve the solidarity of Marxists because they are
attempting to carry out some sort of counter-hegemonic critical project
that promotes progressive social change; and

perhaps add a third

3. They have noticed some things about the structure of counterhegemonic
movements or potentials, particularly in the nature of non-class baseds
new social movwements, that Marxists miss or denigrate.

The first point is not veryt plausible by itself. No doubt things are
differenta nd have unanticipated dynamics. Possiblt these can be be
described as postmodern dynamics, tendenciers towards fragmentation,
dislocation, collapse of grand metanarrative prohjects, etc. In that sense
we may live in a postmodern world. It doesn't follow that postmodern
theoiry is the best, or even a good way to deal with these.

Some pomo theory is good and constructive. Foucault's notion of
disciplinary power and survellience is a great contribution; his treatment
of sexuality as a construct is very deep. I have said nice things about
Iris Young and Nancy Fraser; I think that the Critical Legal Theorists,
who are for the most part pomis in law, often are insightful.

But in general I think that pomo is a wilflful retreat from understanding,
a refusal to theorize. I think its genberal rejection of universalist
projects, a refusal justified on no more solid grounds than that they
don't seem popular today, is both defeatist and intellectuallly dishonest.
As practiced, much pomo, the bulk of it, is carried out at a level of
argument that gurantees confusiona nd incoherence: George's comments on
the law of noncontradiction are a case in point. We may live in a
postmodern world and some pomo theorist may have brains, but the pomo
project is no way to understand the world we live in, or to change it.

The second point, about solidarity, is also unpersyuasive. In the first
place, it's hgard to Marxists to have solidarity, as opposed to tactical
alliances, with people whose whole project is devoted to attacking them.
In the second place, it would be silly to close ranks around the defense
of bad argument and obscurantism on the premise that these guys are sort
of on our side. Marxistssts don'[t think that bad Marxist argument should
be immune from criticism, including savage and withering criticism. Why
make an exception for pomo?

This doesn't mean that we can't defend intellectual respectable pomo where
it exists, or that tactical allinaces are always inappropriate, or that
some institutional gains, like Black studiesa nd women's studies or even
cultural studies are not worthy of defence. But that's different from
solidarity, a kind of deep identification of interests.

The third point has some more merit. Only some: because Marxists have been
interested in a lot of the cultural phenomena that so entrance pomos. I
cut my teeth on Raymond Williams and EP Thompson, and even though I am a
fairly hard bitten analytical Marxist with an affinity for formal models,
these thinkers inculcated in me a lasting concern for self conceptiona nd
cultural expression of class and other identity. There is no deeper
student of cultural studies than Gramsci, whom pomos keep on as their pet
Marxuist, trying to strip him of the unifying project for which he
sacrificed his career, health, and freedom. No less orthodox figure
than Trotsky thought that The Problems of Everyday Life deserved a book.

Still, all that said, pomo attention to problems of recognition and
identity has prioduced some good work. And pomos have helped put the
interests of other saubordinate groups than workers firmly on the map as
valuable in their own right and not just as insdtrumwentally useful to the
class struggle. So there's something there.

But all that said, the level of pomo argument is woefully low as a rule
and the basic tendency of pomo politics is reactionary.   

On Tue, 5 Nov 1996, George Yudice wrote:

I think that the grounds of the
> "proliferation of antagonisms" is driven by capitalism. But, as I wrote
> in my posting, that does not absolve us from rethinking how to mobilize
> a viable oppositional movement under these circumstances. And that
> includes working with those who apparently wage their politics in
> relation to identity

Good, a clear statement and one with which I agree.

> I said:
> "It's trivial and obvious to say that to say something we have to use
> language. It's equally obvious taht unless all we are talking about is
> the way we say it we are talking about something extralinguistic.
> 
George said:
> I don't think it is so trivial. How the market, the media, the welfare
> state agencies, academic research, etc. generate terms of description,
> including the ones pertaining to group identities, is not trivial and is
> a source of conflict.

This is the subject of Marxist critique of ideology. The difference btween
Marxism and pomo on this point is that pomos seem to think that the fact
of linguistic expression has some deep metaphysical implication, e.g.,
that the world itself is linguistically constructed, while Marxists are
interested in how linguistic and symbolic expression can mystify reality
or mobilize counterhegemonic movements.

SNIP

> "Um. Creation myths of this sort are hardly worth debunking."
> 
> Sokal seemed to be trying pretty hard to debunk them.
> 
Well, he indicated briefly taht he thought they were faolse. It wasn';t
the central point of his talk.

I said:
> "For one, a logical contradiction is an assertion of a proposition and
> its negation. A dialectical contradiction is a systematic instability in
> the world. It is not a relkation among propositions."
> 
George said:
> That was my point.

Could have fooled me. I thought you were saying taht we had to reject
noncontradiction.

George said:
 The either/or demanded by Sokal in regard to the Zuni
> creation myth/Bering Strait crossing, is a logical contradiction. It can
> be solved at the formal level. However, that does not really engage the
> problem at hand, which is the controversy that I think underlies all
> this. 

The problejm at hand, as Sokal saw it it, was that some pomos or anyy
archaeologists were falling into nonsense in a confused attempt to advance
a worthy political project. His idea was that we could and should promote
these projects without accepting, or pretending to accept, logical
contraditions, and we would do better at promoting them if we didn't do that.

Sokal's invocation of the either/or was used as a rhetorical means
> to persuade his audience that the relativism of postmodernists is
> specious.

By "a rhetorical means" do you mean "an argument," taht is, a reason to
believe?

 By postmodernists, he meant those people who accept the idea
> of local or standpoint knowledge. That idea has,  in turn, been used to
> legitimize the political claims of some people who speak as/on behalf of
> women, or African Americans, etc. It is true that not all of these
> spokerspersons speak for everyone in these groupings. But then neither
> did the Sandinistas, to whom Sokal showed solidarity, speak for all
> working class or deprived Nicaraguans.

Look here, George. The question is not who speaks for whom, but what
clainms are true and, with reference to the claims we think are true, how
do we advance the causes we think are worthy?

Just because the idea of local knowledges have been used to advance some
worthy interests doesn't mean that we trash those interests if we reject
the claims of those who purport to have this knowledge. Nor does it evenb
mean taht we show them a lack of respect. I work with left religious
Christains all the time. They know I'm a Marxist atheist and that I think
their religious beliefs are false. But we respect each other's commitment
to social justice. They tell me I'm serving God despite myself, and I
don't dispute them, except when it gets late and we get drunk.

It's a basic confusion to imagine that in order to promote someone's cause
we have to credit every argument that anyone imagines might be advanced in
its favor.

> As I wrote to Rakesh, as far as I am concerned, the Zuni myth is no more
> and no less factual than the Book of Genesis. But that is not the
> problem, which is, in my opnion, the consequences of invoking the
> controversy uncritically. Sokal invoked the controversy without
> bothering about the political frame that circumscribes his even knowing
> about it. That, it seems to me, is irresponsible. The issue has to be
> extended to a critique of property, land tenancy, etc. Without that, the
> either/or model remains academic.

But that's not what Sokal was talking about. He was accepting the validity
of the Zuni claims and discussing why certain ways of promoting them are bad.

> 
> The reason for working closely with questions of language, discourse,
> and image is that they mediate all argumentation. You may think you have
> the "better argument," but that is academic. I am not saying that one
> should cultivate contradiction and the illogical, but rather that we
> need to examine how mediations work. It is through mediations that
> alliances are struck, even unwittingly. This would explain, in part, the
> proximity of some Marxist "I have the better argument" arguments and
> those of conservatives and rightists.

Working with language requires, first of all, intellectual integrity and
good argument.

--Justin




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