Date: Tue, 11 Apr 1995 08:42:12 -0700 (PDT)
From: Kenny Mostern <kennym-AT-uclink2.berkeley.edu>
Subject: Re: "Interests"- it's for your own good?


One problem with discussing "interest" among a bunch of marxists (that 
means myself) is that we tend to have an inadequate grasp of 
psychoanalysis.  I say this not because I think psychoanalysis in its 
totality is true, 
but because it seems to me plausbile that psychic interest and social or 
class interest really are at odds with one another in consist patterns, 
perhaps especially in bourgeois society.  If this is true one needs a 
rigorous way of accounting for this particular contradiction (and the 
potential for its overturning). 

The broader marxist category in which interest is usually discussed is 
"ideology"--that is, ideology is often the explanatory category regarding 
why people act against their own interests.  (Eagleton believes that 
ideologies are structured like Freud's picture of the psyche.)  Does 
anyone want to have a discussion about this term?  

Kenny Mostern
UC-Berkeley Ethnic Studies Graduate Group

Against:  racism, sexism, homophobia, capitalism, militarism
For:  the truth--and the funk!



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