Date: Thu, 11 Apr 1996 14:29:28 -0400
Subject: Re: postmodernism


In a message dated 96-04-10 21:33:10 EDT, Doug writes:

>Ok, Leo & Rahul - name some names. Who's good, and who's crap, in the pomo
>arena?

After a wrote a response, it sounded like a lot of ex cathadra
pronouncements, and thus rather pretentious. It would certainly take some
time to develop the justification for the judgments that lie below; I lay
them here so that my position is clear. Hopefully it can be a preface to some
serious discussion.

There are only a very few of the figures which are generally subsumed within
this category of post-modernism which I would classify as truly superior
thinkers worthy of very serious study -- Foucault and Derrida (if one does
not attempt to extend him beyond his theories for reading texts) come to mind
immediately. (Which is not to say that I don't have serious differences with
both thinkers). There are a series of others who are more derivative, but
present challenging views within their own disciplines -- Rorty in
philosophy, Connolly in political theory, Butler in gender studies/feminism,
Gates with respect to African-American literature. Some of the more
interesting work in social and political theory from a radical
left/democratic viewpoint takes place at the juncture of Marxism/post-Marxism
and post-modernism, among other currents -- Anthony Giddens, Zygmunt Baumann
and Laclau and Mouffe. Some work which has almost cult status, such as Donna
Haraway's work, is IMO of mild interest, but hardly of the insight one would
think by its reputation.  A lot of the French figures -- Lacoue-Labarthe,
Lyotard, Baudrillard -- I do not find very interesting. And, needless to
note, a great deal of the academic work are poor replications of the current
ideological fashion (just as we were bombarded with crude Althusserianism and
crude Frankfurt School analyses fifteen years ago.) 

My view of post-modernism is really not all that different than I how see the
Marxist tradition. There are some (relatively small ) number of theorists in
the Marxist tradition which I see as quite superior, which are worthy of very
serious study and with which I have fundamental agreements -- Gramsci, Cabral
and the later Poulantzas come to mind immediately; there are (many more)
other Marxist thinkers with which I have some fundamental differences, but
still represent rather rigorous and interesting interpretations of Marxism
worthy of study -- Lukacs, Althusser, Fanon, C. L. R. James, some of the
Frankfurt School {Adorno, Horkheimer and Habermas}; there are some figures
which need to be studied for historical reasons, but they are really not,
IMO, very theoretically rewarding -- Engels, Kautsky, Bernstein, Luxemburg,
Lenin, Trotsky, Bukharin; and there is a lot of useless dreck -- not least of
which is found in Stalin, Mao and their and Trotsky's various epigones. Much
of academic Marxism is just commentary on these various figures, and where it
attempts to develop its own interpretations (rational choice Marxism), it is
not very rewarding; nonetheless, there are a few exceptions even here -- E.
P. Thompson and Stuart Hall, for example.

This is not meant to be exhaustive, but it gives a sampling of what I think;
it is probably also heavily weighted toward my own interest in politics and
political theory. If I were an economist or a anthropologist, I would
probably have different slants.



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