File spoon-archives/phillitcrit.archive/phillitcrit_2000/phillitcrit.0007, message 85


Date: Wed, 12 Jul 2000 14:52:19 +0200
From: Reg Lilly <rlilly-AT-skidmore.edu>
Subject: Re: PLC: Marxist Propaganda/I Feel Good


Hi Michael,
    Being the running dog capitalist pig bujwah academic that I am, I'm not
really up to spead on readable defenses of Marxism.  There is, of course,
Baudrillard's essay on the Gulf War (including neat pics), and though he's not a
Marxist pushing Marxism, he is a French intellectual spawned in the 1960's,
which means he's a closet Marxists.  There is also a little essay in the
eponymous book _Humanism de l'autre homme_ by Levinas, though I don't know if
it's translated, but it's not not Marxism, but on humanism and ideology.
Derrida's _Moscou aller-retour_ or his _Specter's of Marx_, which would make
them flock to Kundera (especially the sexy scenes from the movie).  Maybe
there's some student of Althusser out there who's written something 'straight
down the pike.'

bon chance!

Ciao,
Reg

Michael Harrawood wrote:

> Okay, a comment and a query:
>
> >>  Troy boy, go play with people of your own intellect/age. This is not a
> >>  Marxist list.
> >>  g
> >
> >Let's see, 29 and entering a PhD program in Arts and the HUmanities... WHat
> >makes me think at the very least that I'm older than you?
>
> I've been following this thread with some interest and am curious whether
> anybody has any notions as to why it went so quickly to ad hominum and
> personal issues.  Why does THIS particular discussion have to do with who
> is gay and who is straight, who is part Cherokee and who isn't?
>
> I wonder if it is because of what's under discussion.  Troy's early
> comments -- of the "Ya can't talk to the damn marxists"--type -- got me
> thinking about Merleau-Ponty's defence of French communism in _Humanism and
> Terror_.  His argument, mostly cast in response to Arthur Koestler's
> _Darkness at Noon_, is that Marxism cannot answer to Liberalism in
> Liberalism's terms and must always seem to shrink from any sort of
> exchanges with Liberalism that are cast as "principled."  I'm sure somebody
> else on the list can put this better than I have here.
>
> My sense is that here the move to ad hominum comes from the fact that these
> two critical modes don't address one another, and so there isn't really
> anything to do except get into one another's faces.  (In _Three Kings_
> there's a scene where Mark Whalberg is trying to justify the Gulf War in
> terms of universal principles: "You invaded another country.  You're not
> supposed to do that."  And the Iraqi soldier holding him prisoner shoves a
> CD into his mouth and makes him swallow crude oil.  Fin de chapitre. . .)
>
> That's the comment -- that Merleau-Ponty has gotten something essentially
> right; that Marxist and Liberal discourse are set up to refuse to answer to
> one another; and that such a refusal at the level of thinking invites ad
> hominum.  Of the two, I think American liberalism is winning the war, which
> makes me want to stop and look on the ground behind me for what has slipped
> away in the way we think about these things.  I'm thinking particularly of
> the Fukiyama book, _The End of History and the Last Man_, which thinks in
> terms of triumphal finishes for humanity.
>
> Here's my query.  I'm preping a syllabus for a course on Humanism, a course
> I think I've mentioned here already.  I thought it might be a good idea to
> thematize some of the humanist and anti-humanist elements of cold war
> political life.  Somebody mentioned Kundera.  I'd like to have my freshmen
> read the Merleau-Ponty, but I think its too tough for a freshman course.
> Does anybody out there have any suggestions for a good and readable defense
> of post-war Marxism that I could throw in alongside, say, The Unbearable
> Lightness of Being?  Or, maybe better, critical works about Gulf War
> rhetoric?  Any ideas at all. . . ?
>
> I'm pleased and excited to be teaching this course and will welcome any
> help or criticism that anybody might have.
>
> With thanks in advance,
>
> Michael Harrawood
> Jupiter, Florida
>
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