Chiming in after long-time hibernation.
The strange co-incidence is that while you penners are discussing
PoMo/marxism, the same struggle is developing here in Norway around the
editorial politics of Europe's only marxist/revolutionary daily
newspaper, KLASSEKAMPEN (="class struggle"). The cultural affairs pages
in that paper are turning PoMo after the hiring of a new editor again
hiring in his chummies from the post-something literary circles.
We are getting nebulous, loooong-winded, more or less incomprehensible
tirades, with name-dropping (Kristeva, Lacan, Focault, Derrida,
Blanchot, etc. etc.) and sentences/terms that the writers MUST KNOW are
incomprehensible even to the readership of Klassekampen, who in all
fairness must be said to be quite literate. The contents are very much
about decadence, the death of reason, aesthetics of violence,
melancholy, and the "problems" of the cultural so-called avant-garde in a world
where every possible break of conventions already has been tried (yawn).
Based on Norwegian experience, It seems obvious to me that our PoMo
gang has one important unmentionable motive for what
they do, the trivial and well-known academic motive of showing off. The
H.C. Andersen story about "The Emperor's New Clothes" very often comes
to mind.
So far, a biased report from a simple-minded Norwegian marxist.
Now to Antonio Callari and/or Elisabeth King-Callari who say(s)
> ... And besides, if listening, as a prelude to
> organizing, is not hardly new for the left, how come we (i hope there is
> still a "we") have done such a miserable job?
There is of course an alternative explanation for that, especially in
the U.S. but also here in Norway: The total capitalist
in-a-thousand-direct-and-more-subtle-ways dominance over the mass
media/commercial culture/entertainment/consumerism.
This is the Chomsky type of analysis which i subscribe to, and
which of course is an alternative to the battery of post-modernist,
post-structuralist, deconstructivist theories, which seem to believe
that the problem somehow is in language itself, and in people being unable to
accept, absorb and identify with the special traits of different subcultures
("discourses").
IMO, you can do ANY sort of advanced analysis and identification with
the language, fixations, value-system of a subculture you wish to
mobilize - but the fundamental and decisive reason that it is difficult
to reach results EVEN when you are good at this (which you of course
may be even if you haven't read one word of PoMo theory, this is very
much a question of your personality), is the extreme dominance over
everybody's minds (our own, too) because of the daily
commmercial/ideological/right-wing values bombardment from the media
system. I see NO WAY out of this based on a pomo-angled strategy. It is
now as before a question of "the ruling thoughts are the thoughts of
the rulers", ALSO in oppressed sub-cultures, and EVEN if they consider
themselves very "outside" mainstream society (gays, f.inst.).
This does not mean i am a complete pessimist. But the road to progress
must build more on the Chomsky type of analysis than PoMo. IMHO.
And, btw, Chomsky is merciless against f.inst. Lacan and Focault. What have
the PoMo adherents to say this interesting conflict?
Trond Andresen
