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