Date: Fri, 5 Apr 1996 09:54:29 -0500 (EST)
Subject: First post. Intro.



Hello,

First, two short paragraphs of talking back, and then a discussion of my
interests. 

I followed the original marxism list for a few weeks, trying to figure out
what's going on with SO MUCH ACTIVITY!  List flame wars, expulsions, the
PCP, threats of various kinds, the loss of some good participants,
Vietnam, imperialism, the GM strike, whether Adolpho is a real person,
Peruvian entanglements, list dynamics, meta-list dynamics, meta-meta-list
dynamics, etc.: it reminded me of a poorly organized intelligence agency,
infiltrated with more disinforming moles than my backyard. 

In the privileged position of newbie, I counsel liberal use of the delete
key--up to a point: when one group splinters from the old (for whatever
other inchoate reasons), their harrassers from the original list are
identifiable by the very fact that they follow the splinter group to the
new list and try to rehash the old issues that led to the split.  At that
point, any computer means necessary to block permanently the now
identified harrassers is permissible.  Harrassment is a widely
acknowledged cyberspace offence of the first order.  It's precisely where
casual and intermittent bullying and abuse become neurotic and fixated,
i.e., "stalking."  

****

My interest in Marxism was echoed in something Lisa Taylor said some time
ago; that there is great need to cultivate Marxist thinking and thinkers. 
Fredric Jameson talks similarly about the absence of any genuine Marxist
culture in America, and the need to foster such.  The tendrils of
positivism, scientism, anti-intellectualism and Analytic philosophical
triviality and arrogance are sunk deep in our culture's ways of
reason--ways of pragmatism--and they are stultifying and boring to the
core. 

I'm currently working on a dissertation about Raymond Williams' work (a
past European correspondent for The Nation, and yes, a proponent of the
*long* revolution and not some thrilled sectarian bloodbath).  My work is
shaping up into (yet another) introduction to his work--if with a selected
focus on method specifically: dialectical thought and method.  I'm
interested in the tension between the Leavisian and Hoggartian "left"
culturalism on the one hand, and the Marxist "cultural materialism" on the
other.  There's a general tendency to view Williams as a "tame Lukacs"
(Edward Said) and I'm trying to see just how unconsciously Hegelian (or
Arnoldian) and how tame Williams is given his alignments with Gramsci and
Voloshinov against Althusser.  Williams led me to read such materialists
as Sebastiano Timpanaro and Lucio Colletti. 

Mostly, I prick up my ears when anyone mentions Williams or Ollman,
Timpanaro, dialectical method, the history of Marxism or neo-Marxism,
e.g., Laclau and Mouffe and Stanley Aronowitz, Balibar and Zizek, ecology,
the Greens and homeschooling.  Marxism and anthropology are good too!

I love Blake and think every Proverb of Hell is true, and am happy to see
his stuff discussed.  "The truth cannot be told so as to be understood and
not be believed."  This last, though I believe it, has left me uneasy
about human beings' will to communicate. 

I also get very interested when discussion turns to talk about Marxist
scholars such as Anthony Wilden, Bill Nichols and Martin Jay, Abdul
Janmohamed and Patrick Brantlinger. 

If anyone ever took the time to read Wilden's Marxian introduction--"The
Scientific Discourse: Knowledge as a Commodity"--to the second edition of
his _System and Structure: Essays in Communication and Exchange_
(Tavistock, 1980), I'd be very interested in hearing what you think of it. 
I don't think there's been a more under-rated and under-read American
scholar in the last four decades.  (Janmohamed recommended Wilden in his
seminars and was impressed that Wilden used Fanon's ideas.) Wilden's book
on Lacan (of whom he was quite critical, and then denounced by Lacan for
his independence) was for a long time the only game in town, and yet
reference to his stuff is sparce.  (My hobbyhorse you say?  Well, it
certainly feels like it.) Jameson, in his Lacan essay, makes shy, grudging
reference to Wilden. 
 
I also like reading about Ernest Mandel, Peter Dews, Habermas to a degree,
introductory books on Marx, _Radical Philosophy_, NLR, and Socialist
Review and Social Text.  Right now I'm working on Marx's Econ. and Phil.
Manuscripts and C.L.R. James' _Notes on Dialectics_.  Thanks to Ralph
Dumain for cluing me in on the existence of an impressive theorist in
James.  I'm curious to know why no one talks much of James.


Sincerely,

Van







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