Date: Sat, 5 Apr 1997 14:33:16 -0500 From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood-AT-panix.com> Subject: Re: M-I: PANIC LEFT: TAKE THREE Brian M Ganter wrote: > Henwood's >coming to Cox's rescue by announcing that STYLE is the lynch pin of >ideological struggle. Don't be such a bonehead. Style is not the "lynch pin" of struggle. It is, however, an index of how you relate to the outside world: how broad or narrow your intended audience is, and whether you are trying to use opacity as a sign of your own purity and/or profundity. It is also a way of drawing in readers or listeners. A poem, say, that begins "Of Man's First Disobedience, and the Fruit/Of that Forbidden Tree..." makes you want to read beyond the second line, even if you find Christianity a ludicrous or even repellent doctrine. Ditto a political essay beginning "A specter is haunting Europe...." Style, too - aesthetic experience in general - is a prefiguration of a better world. I wouldn't want to live in a society designed by people who write as badly as you do, comrade Ganter, just as I don't want to live in one designed by bourgeois economists. >Soon, undoubtedly Henwood will change his view on LUDIC FEMINISM... Why? Ebert has a lot to say; you Buffalo guys & gals are just pulling your puds. You know, unlike many others here, I agree with you that it's important to take on the pomos. If Marx could devote pages to MacCullough and Malthus, contemporary Marxists could devote a few pages to Foucault and Butler. In fact, one topic worthy of investigation would be why the group of writers labeled "pomo" - who are admittedly quite a heterogenous group, despite the single label - write the way they do. Style is inseparable from substance, unless you adhere to some vulgar expressionistic model of intellectual production. It's also a fact that people like Foucault and Butler are very influential - which you guys aren't. So instead of denouncing us, why don't you tell us why this gang is so influential? Doug -- Doug Henwood Left Business Observer 250 W 85 St New York NY 10024-3217 USA +1-212-874-4020 voice +1-212-874-3137 fax email: <mailto:dhenwood-AT-panix.com> web: <http://www.panix.com/~dhenwood/LBO_home.html> --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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