Boy, is pen-l hopping (and hopping mad, on occasion), concerning
postmodernism, pro & con. It's becoming PoMoTown, while of course
Detroit will continue to be MoTown (Modernist Town).
Before starting my hopefully nonrandom points, one comment: Steve
Cullenberg refers to my comment that I didn't know "Derrida from
dogfood" as an example of "puerile alliterative juxtapositions."
Steve assumes that I was criticizing Derrida. Instead, I was
stating my ignorance. I know that professions of ignorance are rare
in academia, but in this case, it is true: the postmoderns'
difficult-because-profound or difficult-because-obscurantist
(choose one) prose has driven me away from all efforts to read and
thus understand Derrida and other postmodernists. (Wolf and Resnick
are exceptions: their prose is quite lucid, allowing me to
understand why I disagreed with them.)
It would be nice if Steve had reacted to my proposed opposition
between the "pomo" and Marx's visions of fetishism (to use a dirty
word) by telling me how it was inaccurate. Instead, he seems to
have interpreted it as simply an attack (even though I admitted at
the end that 5% of any school might be worthwhile; this pomo 5%
might include Derrida's work as a whole). His response _felt_ on the
level of "shut up, Jim" or "you can't criticize what you don't
understand so don't even ask questions."
I think (with Jerry Levy) it's futile to try to summarize any
school or any major author's ideas in READER'S DIGEST style (or in
micro-RD single paragraph summations). (Steve's one-paragraph
summary of Derrida made the latter seem superficial, since so many
others have similar perspectives. There must be more. Doug's one
para summary of Marx also left a lot to be desired.)
But I would like to know if there is one major valid (and new)
proposition that the postmodern schools have to contribute to
social science (besides telling us that we should call it "social
studies"). Is there one or (even better) more proposition that
makes the cost of wading through that prose worthwhile?
Joe Medley's quote was nice, but lots of others have criticized
academic squabbles in similar ways. Antonio Callari's discussion of
what he got out of postmodernism seemed to fit with Michael
Albert's Marxism (in Z Magazine) -- but Michael Albert is a
notorious anti-PoMo. A lot of the "pomo" criticisms of 1960s New
Leftism and old-fashioned Marxism arose with the feminists and the
"minority" leftists, before pomo hit the scene. Blair presents a
bibliography, without a clear summary of the content of the books.
For example, Laurie Garrett's book seems more an example of
left-inflenced science journalism than of postmodernism.
A key point (as someone said) is that opposition to modernism doesn't
make one a postmodernist. (Just as the valid criticisms of modernist
social science are not enough. What is the alternative? There are
more than one.)
In an unpublished paper that I presented at a Rethinking Marxism
conference too long ago, I (perhaps simplistically) posed the
following categorization, the division of Marxism into three camps:
1) modernist Marxism (e.g., Oscar Lange and what Colletti termed
"the Marxism of the 2nd International" and also the 3rd and 4th
Internationals): following the deterministic laws of motion of
capital, the forces of production develop, almost automatically
producing socialism out of capitalism.
2) postmodern Marxism (e.g., my interpretation of Wolf & Resnick,
generalizing and extending Althusser's critique of #1): because of
overdetermination (in which everything determines the character of
everything else), we really can't say much at all about the future of
capitalism. There's not much of a guide to political action (though if
taken seriously, school #1 doesn't need any guide to political action).
3) my alternative (yay for the good guys! ;-) Seriously, it's not
that original and is partly based on Mike Lebowitz's BEYOND CAPITAL):
while school #1 is right about the deterministic nature of the laws
of motion of capitalism, they are wrong about the automatic (or
semiautomatic) transition to socialism. That is because the laws of
motion of capitalism (the relatively concrete social formation in
which capital is only a part) also includes the proletariat.
The latter does not have deterministic laws of motion, but instead
involves an overdetermined complex of ideological, political and
economic levels: workers are people (with consciousness, sex, race,
location, language, etc.), not automatons. (Capitalists don't _want
to be_ automatons, but the coercive laws of the market drive them to
act as if they were such.) Because the laws of motion of the
proletariat are not deterministic, the system as a whole cannot be:
the workers (with all the complexities of other kinds of oppression
besides class messing things up) are the wild card in the deck.
However, school #2 makes a mistake to give up on _any_ determinism.
In fact, we should acknowledge that Marx never finished his
exploration and explication of the laws of motion of capital -- and
try to finish his job. If we can figure out the deterministic part
of capitalism's dynamics are (and we have several good
approximations of that theory available), they can help us as a
guide to political practice. That is, we can get a good idea of
what working people _should_ do.
BTW, I'm not into preaching. Part of what _leftists_ should do is
to _respect_ the people we are trying to reach. (If Jesse Jackson
were here, he'd say that "preaching prevents reaching." Or is that
too puerile?) This need for _respect_ for people is something that
precedes postmodernism by several years. It is right at the center
of the "socialism from below" perspective, which says (to
paraphrase an unfashionable old German guy) "only the workers can
liberate the workers," an insight that applies for women, racial
minorities, etc. Other groups such as intellectuals) can _help_,
but if we want to avoid having those other groups become new
bosses, it has to be a process of collective and democratic
self-liberation by the oppressed. (Rosa Luxemburg had a lot of good
things to say here, too, in her critique of Lenin: the mistakes of
the people are worth more than the successes of the self-appointed
leaders.)
in pen-l solidarity,
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED]
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Econ. Dept., Loyola Marymount Univ.
7900 Loyola Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90045-8410 USA
310/338-2948 (daytime, during workweek); FAX: 310/338-1950
"Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way
and let people talk.) -- K. Marx, paraphrasing Dante A.
