> Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 07:20:12 -0800 (PST)
> From: ALI KADRI <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Indeed it was harmful because it was ahistorical; it
> generalised an immediate manifestation of history into
> a rule of historical development. There is a certain
> rigidity that belongs more to physics than to social
> science. This case pertains more to the Latin American
> Structurlist School than it does to Frank ...
>From Jo'burg, same shit, different place. There was an explosion of
Bad Structuralism from the 1960s in left university circuits
(especially where I teach, at Witwatersrand): from
Third-Internationalist "Colonialism of a Special Type" to
"Articulations of Modes of Production" to Poulantzian "Fractions of
Capital" and later Regulation Theory. All tried to explain the
apartheid-capitalist conjuncture, but none were particularly
convincing (fatal chronological flaws or methodological muddles
prevailed). There was never much of a post-structuralist reaction,
thank goodness, but the main left scholars retreated into either
atheoretical social history during the 1980s or policy-wonking
consultancies during the 1990s. Most dropped their faddish radical
proclivities in due course. "From the grassroots to the classroots"
is how we mock our older ex-neomarxist brothers.
