File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1997/97-04-15.135, message 100


Date: Fri, 11 Apr 1997 01:45:50 -0400 (EDT)
From: Stephen C Tumino <sctumino-AT-acsu.buffalo.edu>
Subject: M-TH: SIDE NOTE: PANIC PROYECT






------------------------------------------------
Revolutionary Marxist Collective at Buffalo/SUNY




	SIDE
	NOTE:


			PANIC 
			PROYECT




1. UNCLE LOU in action:


As always, unable to think, Uncle Lou is remembering and reminiscing. He
is, however, too old to even know that he is hallucinating and that what
he remembers is not what he thinks he remembers... It is time for L.P to
realize that the "context" has changed: the "performative" left has
nothing to do with Godard.  If the good Uncle spends less time "writing" 
and more in "reading" and perhaps a little in "thinking" he might be able
to see what actually is happening around him... he thinks "performative" 
left is Godard (have you heard of Butler?) and then he takes it upon
himself to critique our notion of cybercapitalism ("What the fuck is it")
or "correct" us on the theory of "fascism". (see below). Uncle Lou needs
not only a Critique but a good old fashioned bourgeois "psychoanalytical" 
session...that at least will suture his memories into a semi-coherent
"story".  Hey Sprouse, see who is leading the opposition of the net left
against us: Uncle Louis!   


II. (Re: FASCISM)


	Whether he is discussing Leninism, Shining Path,
Fascism....("Ganter's Revolutionism") Louis Proyect has one and only
mode of annotation--it is difficult to see anything else in what he passes
off as "analysis".  His annotations too have one and only one mode: to cut
the "concept" (e.g. "fascism") down to a "term" and then limit the term to
a "locality". This is understandable from a person who is unable to
"conceptualize"--remember, he has not read (according to himself) a line
of "philosophy" after Husserl and it is not too difficult to see that he
read Husserl in paraphrase. 
	This inability to "conceptualize' (to get hold of "totality"),
leads him into often funny incoherences...but because he thinks in terms
of paragraphs (often in fact sentences), he does not understand that he is
contradicting himself.  He is, after all, a localist ("Lenin in context") 
and one of the benefits of "localism" is that you do not have to "connect"
and get hold of "totality". According to Proyect the condition of any
authentic understanding of any social phenomenon is "experience" (thus his
wrath at "Buffalo Boys" whom he thinks are writing about the entire world
without having left the campus coffee shops). However, at the same time
that he locates "experience" as the condition of knowing, he marks
Adorno's knowledge of fascism as "false"...Adorno "experienced" fascism
you know ...  Adorno explained it "in context".  His Marxism (and we in no
way endorse his reading of dialectics) is by far more historical, more
materialist, more subtle and more complex than anything Louis Proyect has
produced.  No, Proyect, your understanding of fascism "in context" misses
that "the context" (even for local thinking) has changed...Wake up!... You
say our problem is that we watch too much TV, do "cultural
studies"....(make up your mind tell us : what do you think we are
doing..are we sociologists, cultural studies-ists....tv specialists...what
Louis what?) and at the same time you justify your own fetishization of
"style" by appeal to "communication".  Do you know what cultural studies
is or do you know it "in context".  What really is bothering you is what
someone said recently: your version of centrist marxism is being seen for
what it is -- an incoherent series of reminiscences, memories, anecdotes,
...history has passed you by and you are reduced to screaming at those who
cannot take you seriously..."Wake up!":  even your friends (Cox and co.) 
are humoring you.  Listening to your story about fascism was entertaining
(as the stories of all old uncles are) but irrelevant... 

.... Like Proyect, Austin ("M-Th:Re: M-I: Panic Left 5: Cyberfascism") 
dismisses a new theory of fascism (cyberfascism) as a weak political
analysis simply because it does not conform with his textbook definition
of fascism.  Like Proyect he quotes from definitions of "classic" 
fascism--the fascism of monopoly capital... The task of Marxist theory now
is not simply to annotate the classic definitions but to relocate them: to
place them on the boundaries of emerging contradictions of
cybercapitalism.  [[[A SIDE NOTE to this SIDE NOTE: Hey, Louis, at least
read carefully -- we know you cannot think carefully -- nobody said that
cybercapitalism had RESOLVED contradictions.   We said it had produced
such contradictions that are not explainable by your anecdotes...that what
is needed is rigorous theory.  And by the way since when have you become a
classical Marxist?  You evoke classical Marxism to dismiss Adorno and then
turn around and support Monthly Review that has done nothing but undercut
classical Marxism.  Is there no end to your incoherence and discursive
opportunism?]]]
	Austin's refusal to see the place of cyberfascism and his
insistance that we should be judicious in our use of the term is simply a
strategy of protection -- protection of the likes of Henwood and Proyect
and Dumain.  What else but a fascist is Dumain?  How would you describe
his immigrant bashing? How do you describe Louis Proyects's call for
surveillance and violence against those who oppose his anecdotal social
"history"? (It is also a mark of Louis Proyects's fascism that he writes
[to Ganter] that he [LP] enjoys "skewer-ing" Ganter...This is the kind of
"sadism" that marks the fascist mind...) How do you describe the politics
of Henwood's aesthetics?  What Austin calls "weak analysis" after all is
simply an analysis that goes beyond the text book versions with which
you ("YOU"=CYBERFASCIST) are familiar...





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