File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1997/97-04-23.123, message 78


Date: Tue, 22 Apr 1997 14:57:20 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Amrohini J. Sahay" <ajsahay-AT-mailbox.syr.edu>
Subject: M-TH: PANIC LEFTIST - FRAME EIGHTEEN







Revolutionary Marxist Collective (Syracuse) 

*****************************************



PANIC LEFTIST - FRAME EIGHTEEN



                                     ONE

Gerald Levy who at first seemed to be seriously interested in a
re-theorization of "question" and its relation to power and the matter of
"fascism", has now trivialized the entire issue by resorting to the
strategies of tabloid journalism. A strategy that has made (as he had
calculated) his trivilization of our theoretical task a rallying point (as
if more was needed) around which the retrograde elements on the net-left
can re-consolidate its attempt to drive us off the list. 


                                     TWO
  It is telling that simultaneously we have received a "warning" from the
"Moderator" who says either we stop using the concept of "fascism" or we
are out!  Somehow to use "fascism" is an act of violence but the
relentless attack by the deployment of all forms of racist, sexist and
xenophobic remarks on us are simply harmless "jokes".  The moderator is
fairly indifferent to the number of times, the contexts,... of the use of
for example, "Stalinism".  It does not seem to matter who gets called
"Stalinist" and in what context and what theoretico-political assumptions
lie behind it... Violence is what the "other" does on the net-left: the
"one" is always joking, the "other"  is humorless, the "one" is "witty"..
The idea that the theorization of "fascism"  will get us kicked off the
list is preposterous: we are going to get kicked off for some reason
pretty soon... we will continue our efforts to theorize and mark the
fascist practices on this list by the concept of "fascism"...  Those who
quote text book definitions to us, should "read" not the books but the
existing practices... including those on the net-left... 

  In the move to get us kicked off the list, Doug Henwood, who is busy
building a "good society" out of beautiful sentences, is, as usual,
fulfilling his historical role of "leadership" and guiding this re-UNITED
front to its "destination" (oops, he does not believe in "arche" or
"telos" but....) 


                                    THREE
  Still, we would like to try -- one more time -- to engage Levy in a
non-trivial discussion. The point that we have made (and he refuses to
"read") is that questions are PRODUCED historically and in the process of
an extended CRITIQUE of existing practices. This is another way of saying: 
QUESTIONS are not P E R S O N A L: they are acts of collective inquires
(historical critique of "normal science" to use Kuhn's wording). When this
historicity and collectivity is denied (i.e. when questions are no longer
attempts to mark the material limits of practices to inscribe the
"un-said" back to the "said" and thus transform the practices in
"question"), questions become ARBITRARY -- i.e. they become PERSONAL
assertions of power masquerading as desire for KNOWLEDGE. 

  What works against the theory of question that we are developing is the
prevailing bourgeois theory of knowing that valorizes questions as acts of
VISION, PERSONAL INITIATIVES, INDIVIDUAL CURIOSITY... (all highly valued
personality/personal traits in entrepreneurial capitalism). Our
historicising of "questions" is related to a point that Marx makes when he
writes, "Therefore mankind always sets itself only such tasks as it can
solve;  looking at the matter more closely, it will always be found that
the task itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution
already exist or are at least in the process of formation". Marx's own
"questions" for Hegel (on the matter of "state" for example) are not
ARBITRARY: they come from an extended historical critique (in his HEGEL'S
PHILOSOPHY OF RIGHT and other texts). 

  To usurp the historical critique and turn "question" into an instance of
PERSONAL POWER ("answer me") is an instance of appropriating power by
transferring HISTORY into a PERSONAL matter and putting in place of a
materialist analysis a "cultural", "political" or "cognitive" solution. 
Fascism is the insertion of the cultural solutions ("family values" in the
current Republican discourse, for example, anti-semiticism in Nazi
Germany, Len Pen's anti-immigrant program in France...) for material
contradictions (labor practices...). Hugh Rodwell's "questions" tabulated
in his post, are an extension and substitution for his tropes: Buffalo
"scrotum", bowel movement, ejaculations... They are acts of intimidation,
silencing, exclusion "represented" as questions posed by a knowing"
subject. These questions, in short, were a case of a PERSONAL exercise of
control... 




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