File spoon-archives/marxism.archive/marxism_1994/94-07-31.000, message 79


Date: Fri, 22 Jul 1994 07:43:28 -0400 (EDT)
From: Philip Goldstein <pgold-AT-strauss.udel.edu>
Subject: culture


Adrian,
       I am glad to see that you are interested in cultural matters. I 
liked your discussion of Marcuse, but I was surprised that you take his 
faith in the radical force of surrealism to anticipate postmodern views. 
You may identify the "views" of Pynchon and others with postmodernism, 
but, if we are talking about postmodern theorists, they certainly don't 
share Marcuse's faith in surrealism or your faith in "imaginative" 
literature. These theorists -- see, for example, Anthony Easthope's 
Literary into Cultural Studies or Tony Bennett's Bond and Beyond or 
Outside Literature -- consider popular culture as radical as high 
"imaginative" literature. As an opponent of instrumental rationality, 
Marcuse would never grant that claim. I was also surprised that you take 
Marxists to oppose postmodernism. These critics, who are Marxists, see
themselves as 
postmodernists. So do Laclau and Mouffe, the Rethinking Marxism crowd, 
and many others. One ought not to identify the Frankfurt School of 
Jameson and even the recent Eagleton with all Marxism. 


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