Date: Sat, 6 Apr 1996 14:42:34 +1000 (EST)
Subject: Re: 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
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>     --- from list marxism2-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
There is I think an underestimation of Williams on the left, many
dismissing him as an academic cultural theorist, disregarding the many
valuable insights and contributions to the development of marxist method. I
would be interested in pursuing this further,i.e the marxism of williams.
My starting point was an interest in Williams not gained from any academic
site but rather his notions of "sense of belonging" and the ordinaryness of
culture, so I do not know what I could contribute to an overall discussion
as I am still reading through his work, but  I would like to learn.I'm also
going back to Colletti and Timpano and even Poulantzas as a restudy of them
may assist in constucting a marxism relevant to the late 1990's. I would be
most interested in following the development of your dissertation and also
your comments on Mandel.
Ken Howard.




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