File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/97-04-05.230, message 77


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>




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