Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 07:07:45 GMT From: Chris Burford <cburford-AT-gn.apc.org> Subject: M-TH: RMC criticism of GGMS The Revolutionary Marxist Collective at SUNY has made a criticism of the conference organised at SUNY for April 18 1997 by the Graduate Group in Marxist Studies. The original post of 2nd April had many formatting codes embedded in it and was not reposted in a more widely readable form until 13th April. Like others I find the language and discourse difficult to penetrate but the opening statement is a pretty clear challenge. >> The "Between Capitalism and Democracy" conference at SUNY-Buffalo (April 18, 1997) held by the Graduate Group in Marxist Studies (GGMS) is an occasion to place the left academy in a world-historical context and examine some of its practices that have made it the most trusted ally of capitalism now. The theatre that passes as left at SUNY-Buffalo, should not be treated simply as an amusing but irrelevant side-show. The performative left is representative of the academic left in the US today. As such it requires a sustained analysis. << I find Brad Rothrock's arguments the most concise and comprehensible defence of this position although I would ask him not to post in capitals, as it deafens me. >> To everyone so disconcerted about this type of discourse, I suggest you check out what's going on theoretically in the dominant academy these days. However complex (and verbose) this type of theory may be (queer theory, poststructuralism, post-colonialism, dominant cultural studies, etc), it poses the greatest threat to Marxist theory (in the academy) through its occlusion of a historically and materially based understanding of the social totality. THE MARXIST COLLECTIVE AT BUFFALO IS NOT ADVOCATING THIS TYPE OF THEORY, BUT ATTEMPTING TO TAKE UP THE TERMS OF WHAT PASSES FOR "THEORY" IN THE DOMINANT ACADEMY AND SUPERSCEDE THIS WITH A DIALECTICAL, HISTORICAL, AND MATERIALIST UNDERSTANDING! IT IS A FORM OF COMBAT WITH THE LATEST BOURGEOIS IDEALISM PUT OUT BY THE LATE CAPITALIST KNOWLEDGE INDUSTRY. AS ONE IMPORTANT SITE OF STRUGGLE (I.E. THE ACADEMY IN ITS CURRENT FORM INTERPELLATES MANY OF THE FUTURE WORKERS AND MANAGERS) AGAINST CAPITALISM, IT IS NECESSARY TO FIGHT THIS SHIT WITH AN EQUAL AMOUNT OF COMPLEXITY AND RIGOR! <<< A later post by Brad, unfortunately also in capitals, puts a longer reasoned argument in what I recognised as Althusserian language. I have not read any of this thread until today, skimming over the exchanges, because I did not understand them, and surprised at the escalating heat. I write from an assumption that I do not understand, certainly fully, what is going on but some issues seem clearer to me than others. This challenge by RMC to GGMS both at SUNY, cannot be ruled out of order on theoretical grounds. Its form is a challenge. It confronts and it expects emotions to be raised, and it then amplifies the drama, repeating the word "panic" in the thread title, so the echoes of this word reverberate in cyberspace with each escalating thread using the same title. RMC seems to have a theoretical justication for this: the moderate academic left are at best reformist. Further that what they are doing is going through the motions of a performance, they are "performative" rather than "reformist". This is best exposed by a critique that challenges the theatrical nature of this, as a way of exposing the underlying unreality. The challenge itself is highly theatrical, for reasons it will defend as theoretically valid. It interests and engages the audience by confrontation. They enter onto the stage of a disussion list which already has its own culture, and treat it as a stage with an exciting provocative entrance, deliberately ignoring what culture may be thought to have existed before now. The defenders of that culture rally to resist the alien invading culture, and in the course of this confrontation are forced to examine whether that old culture is itself performative or reformist. A few voices are raised that the challengers have a point after all. At first arrogantly treating the others as a passive audience the hope is to draw them in as participatory actors playing up and playing with the contradiction between players and audience. I do not think a forum such as this or a conference organised by a body like GGMS, can avoid periodic challenges that it is just conciliating with the prevailing hegemony of bourgeois ideas in the academic world. That contradiction is inevitable and will inevitably get expressed from time to time. It is open to each of us to decide how surprised we wish to be when it surfaces. One option for example is to be pro-active: publish an alternative critique or evaluation of the April 18th conference. There is also a contradiction between youth and age. We need to get better at handling this in marxism space. There is also a fundamental theme of whether reformists or moderates are actually opportunists, revisionists, the main enemy in the progessive movement, and "the most trusted ally of capitalism now". This last phrase does not depend on the more recent culture used by the RMC but is an echo of standard positions promoted by Lenin. My own view on the contradictions about marxism and the academic world is that middle elements should not be the main focus of attack even though they almost certainly compromise in a thousand different ways with capitalism, and can be argued to be proponents of bourgeois ideology within marxism. Secondly we cannot ask marxists not to get involved in the technical language, concepts and discourse of their own speciality. In posing the question how left wing academics should indeed engage in reality, it would be helpful to have some discussion about the political or industrial issues that it would be reasonable to expect progressive academics to take up. Issues of tenure have surfaced from time to time and in the US system graduate students and untenured professors appear to me to have a very hard time, considerable insecurity and to be almost certainly exploited. We could all agree that in abstract a fully revolutionary ideological challenge to the hegemony of capitalist culture in the academic world should not compromise strategically, but I do not understand what is so unprincipled about compromising tactically to unite with others to achieve some reforms. The contradiction between bourgeois and proletarian culture exists in the purest form only in abstract, and can exist only in abstract in this pure form. To represent this in a confrontation that is in essence theatrical is startling and thought provoking, but does not help to engage with the reality that it claims to seek to address. But practice will tell, how far RMC on the one hand and GGMS on the other get at Buffalo, and how far the ideas and practice get in the world at large. This will remain the case whether or not there is some (even more explicit) theatrical event at the conference on 18th April. It would be interesting if RMC would want to tell us their tactics ahead of the event, or whether the element of surprise will be indispensible. Anyway on this list we are not obliged to fight with RMC even theatrically, nor to engage in uncomradely exchanges as if to prove that they do not have any relevant point of view at all. Clearly they do have a carefully thought out point of view. No one need feel forced to adopt it, unless somehow it gets under our own skin. Nor to engage with it unless they want to. Chris Burford --- from list marxism-thaxis-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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