Date: Wed, 20 Jul 94 08:29 CDT
From: Andy Daitsman <ADAITS-AT-macc.wisc.edu>
Subject: Re: Laclau and Mouffe and exploitation (repost)


Michael Current wrote:
 
>Andy,
>
>I appreciate where you are coming from, but I think that you are trying
>to preserve, in "false consciousness," an element of marxism that is
>simply not supportable.  In fact, your own discussion about slave
>society tends to undermine it.  You describe a consciousness of oppression,
>accompied by a consiousness of the hopelessness of revolt under certain
>circumstances, and thus the enactment of resistance at a more fragmented
>and personalological level.  Yet this is not "false consciousness," it
>seems to me - sounds more like "realism."
 
and then followed with a lot more stuff.
 
I hope to respond at some point what you say about gay consciousness in Rome,
because there are some real interesting issues there.  But my main point here is
suggest that you may have misinterpreted me on "false consciousness."
 
I am not trying to rescue the concept of "false consciousness," which I in fact
associate with elitist and vanguardist conceptions of marxism that detract from
more than promote progressive change.  Rather, I suggested that L&M's discussion
of subordination, oppression, and domination was an attempt to deal with the
same historical reality that earlier had led elitist marxists to develop the
concept.  My own position is much closer to that of Scott and Genovese, who
reject the idea, and propose different forms of covert resistance in its place.
 
Just a clarification,
 
Andy Daitsman
Department of History
University of Wisconsin, Madison
adaits-AT-macc.wisc.edu


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