Date: Sat, 2 Mar 1996 01:40:28 -0600
From: rahul-AT-peaches.ph.utexas.edu (Rahul Mahajan)
Subject: Re: RAHUL: CLUTCHING YOUR PEARLS


Amazing, Ralph. We even agree on the one group it's legitimate to
stigmatize -- French intellectuals. I have only limited experience, but
certain things stick out like a sore thumb. English intellectuals may be
weak on theory and shallow of analysis, but they almost always write
clearly, and are sensible and honest and rational. French intellectuals
delight in statements that make no sense and pronouncements that have no
justification, and generally try to hide vacuity with a mass of verbiage.
Americans are a mix, unfortunately tending toward the French more recently.

>>Indians do have sex -- that's why there are so many of us.
>
>I regret to say I lack personal experience in this department, but
>I am more than willing to broaden my horizons.  Could you help to
>arrange something?

Sorry. Currently all my efforts in this area are directed toward another
beneficiary.

>>As long as I remain in my ivory tower, .... However, people are
>>dying out there. If somebody does something to try to stop that,
>>I have to give them credit, even if I think they're full of
>>shit.
>
>Is it possible that this very attitude is an ivory-tower one?
>Perhaps your very tolerance and yes-buts are a luxury?  If you
>recall, I never recommended sitting in judgment on people in a
>tight spot, but I also warned against mindless cheerleading from a
>safe distance, which may serve no other purpose other than
>indulging your own sense of guilt and alienation.  If you have the
>luxury of not having to walk in someone's shoes, don't you also
>have the obligation to avoid thinking within their limitations?
>
>>You espouse a certain purity that's very seductive.
>
>I've never espoused any purity.  I don't come from the upper
>middle class and I'm not an ultraleftist purist or whatever
>political type you may be familiar with.  I don't think there is
>anything deep or profound about acting expediently or making
>necessary compromises.  Why?  Because circumstances will tell you
>when you have to compromise.  But when there is nothing at stake
>for you personally and you shack up with hoodlums when it's not
>really necessary, then you are a dangerous adventurist criminal,
>and I'm sick of that crap.

Even though we're slanging back and forth here, I don't think our views
diverge all that much. I'm also violently opposed to cheerleading from the
sidelines. I remember talking to someone from CISPES right after the
armistice when the leftists agreed to disarm and turn everything over to
the rightists, who in turn agreed not to kill them all at once. They were
circulating some petition supporting the accords, and I asked one if she
didn't think they were signing their own death warrant. She said, "Well, we
have to assume they know what's going on there better than we do, and they
made the decision, blah, blah, blah," not of course thinking about who it
was who actually made the decision and who would suffer for it. I thought
to myself at the time, "What a fuckheaded attitude. They're going to sit
over here and mindlessly declare the latest line from the FMLN as gospel
without bothering to think about it themselves." And I think shacking up
with hoodlums is one of the biggest problems leftists have had. That
includes current trendy efforts to make gangs "part of the solution, not
the problem." (Admit it, you can't beat Eldridge for pith.)

The purity I was talking about was not one of ultraleftism but rather a
purity of intellect as opposed to what one might call the purity of
stupidity of many ultraleftists. Even putting it in those terms, I still
think it's lacking.

The yes-buts I can't help. It comes with being a scientist. It becomes
second nature to acknowledge even obscure caveats. Often when I finish I
realize I've only given the caveats without the point I was originally
going to make. I'm trying to get help for this -- I hear there's a good
12-step program in my area.


>>but I don't think Blake was quite sane himself.
>
>You are quite mistaken.

I'm willing to believe that, but from reading him I'd say the burden of
proof is on you. His stuff is brilliant, but I can't imagine, say, having
written it myself. I could about Shelley, to take an example (well, if you
gave me more skill with the language).

>>What I was getting at is that the mix of personal feeling and
>>politics can be very powerful, when it's done correctly, and
>>that both Blake and Cleaver partake of that power. In the same
>>way, Einstein and Steven Hawking were both physicists. I'm
>>surprised at your reaction, since it seems to go against your
>>own oft-stated dictum of not judging art by its political
>>content or implications.
>
>You've completely lost me.

I'm saying just like saying Einstein and Hawking are physicists doesn't
imply that their achievements are of the same order of magnitude, similarly
I wasn't implying that about Blake and Cleaver. On further reflection, I
think the comparison was frivolous (some might even say obscene); I think I
said it partly to yank your chain. Blake is the bee's knees -- and I never
realized that until I subbed to the Marxism list. I read the tyger, tyger
stuff in high school and it didn't mean much to me. I've just recently
begun to realize what he's all about.

As far as judging art -- I think Soul on Ice is a work of art (not
necessarily a very good one), if you construe the term liberally. Meaning I
judge it according to aesthetic criteria, not by whether the sentiments
expressed are psychopathic.

>From what I've read of Huey Newton, he doesn't seem so unreasonable,
although his political philosophy is doctrinaire and naive. Was he a
nutcase too?


>I don't see any signs out there that anyone is going to attempt to
>do something similar on a more sophisticated level: in fact all I
>see is regression.  The Black Panther Militia is essentially
>fascist.  The right-wing wave that has swept the country has in
>its own peculiar way swept over the black social formation.  Do
>you know whom black Washington opinion-makers are holding up as a
>role model as we speak?  Booker T. Washington.  I kid you not.

Yes, I've seen the old Tom cropping up all over the place. We're told
Malcolm X was a disciple of his,  guys like D'Souza are trying to resurrect
him as the greatest leader of the black people, the two guys everyone
genuflects to are MLK and Booker. I read Up from Slavery when I was about
nine or ten and even then I found it highly objectionable. He complains
about some young black guy he found trying to study higher math or
something (maybe it was Greek) in an untidy shack with barely enough to
clothe and feed himself. Some people might have found that admirable, but
he says black people have to forget about those things and be good,
self-sufficient shoeshiners and farmers.


>>if there's one phenomenon to study to understand what are the
>>new organizational forms that will be possible, it's the
>>Zapatistas.
>
>I don't deny it.  How about the Workers Party in Brazil?  Given
>the chaos of the post-Stalinist industrialized states in Eastern
>Europe, one should keep a sharp eye out there too.  Perhaps I have
>not lived up to my responsibilities to discuss political
>strategies, but I bet others out there are far better equipped
>than I to discuss the specifics.  I do think there is something
>missing in people's general orientation, though, and some of my
>hard-core activist friends who generally don't have time for
>academic intellectual pursuits agree with me that we need to work
>on reviving the public sphere by addressing this now crucial,
>terrible, ripping contradiction between alienated labor and the
>mysterious power of accumulated capital to produce.


I agree, but I think the term "reviving" is misleading. It's true that
there used to be a much larger and more interesting public sphere than
there is today. On the other hand, trying to revive that is as pointless as
mourning for all those wonderful peaceful nature-loving cultures of tribal
people of color that were swamped by the reductionist, rationalist,
imperialist European wave. Whatever their merits might have been, they were
incapable of defending themselves against the threats to which they were
subjected. We need to reconceptualize the public sphere and create less
vulnerable structures. I think Uncle Lou and many others would say that the
Internet is of central importance here, although it still has to get around
the privilege bottleneck.

I think there's a lot more to be said about investigating new forms of
organization. Lou Proyect has already addressed some of this with articles
about green movements and the Workers Party in Brazil, but the field needs
to be widened. I think there are some currents of interest in India too,
although much of what they do takes a reactionary form. A point which has
unfortunately gotten very little play on the list is that anything having
to do with "women's issues" always has a constituency leaping forth like
Athena from Zeus's skull. The agendas are not necessarily very impressive,
but it's a phenomenon that's necessary to study for anyone who wants to
understand what kinds of popular movements can and will arise.

Rahul




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