Re: [Marxism] Fwd: The Conference Manifesto - NYTimes.com
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Yeah, well, personal attacks seem to be part of the territory when you try to say something meaningful or controversial out there in public. My daughter is a self-acknowledged alcoholic, disarmingly so if you read her books. And she has grossly falsified and exaggerated my part in her life. It's what you do, often, especially if your field is fiction, to sell your commodity. My take on parenting is perform the act if you can't refrain, do your best but expect nothing and then you are less likely to be disappointed. We adopted my spouse's gifted 10-year old autistic granddaughter a few years ago, so I'm having another chance at it. When my wife showed me the review of this book in Book Forum I drafted a letter demanding that this be expunged. But then I found that her publisher was part of the Bertellsmann publishing empire, with their formidable battery of lawyers, and the book was already in print. And so yes I was seventeen back then, 91 now, and still somewhat sentient. I wish the same to you, and when will I learn to shut up. On 5/10/15 1:11 PM, Ralph Johansen via Marxism wrote: But maybe forward to another form of dialectical clarity, if a more effective such relationship to one another can be visualized? I recall that when I was about seventeen, in the late 1930s in the depths of the depression, I accompanied a friend to a party in a badly run-down house in the poorest part of my home town. It was one of the first times I had ever gotten smashed. Holy mackerel. Someone older than me (and Gary McLennan and Hans Ehrbar). Ralph, were you *really* seventeen in the late 1930s? Also, is this you? Ralph Johansen, Christensen’s father, was charismatic but distant, a ponytailed Marxist lawyer who defended draft dodgers and Black Panthers. His hold on the daughter he named Laurie Kate Johansen continued long after her mother bravely left him and moved with her three daughters to Arizona to pursue her education. (When Christensen’s first stepfather, Jim Christensen, adopted the girls, their father’s name was removed from their birth certificates. She dropped the name Laurie at 14.) full: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2013/08/23/696410fc-e97f-11e2-aa9f-c03a72e2d342_story.html --- This email is free from viruses and malware because avast! Antivirus protection is active. http://www.avast.com _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Fwd: The Conference Manifesto - NYTimes.com
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * On 5/10/15 2:09 PM, Ralph Johansen via Marxism wrote: And so yes I was seventeen back then, 91 now, and still somewhat sentient. I wish the same to you, and when will I learn to shut up. Well, I'll be fucked. I always thought you were a young'un like me--seventy or so. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Fwd: The Conference Manifesto - NYTimes.com
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Louis Proyect wrote ... http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/05/04/the-conference-manifesto/ An article that begins with We are weary of academic conferences. Worth reading for those who are presenting at the Left Forum, because it describes all too many left conferences that I have attended. There has to be a way to do this effectively. Maybe back to platonic method as one of the best forms of discourse, for those who may not fully remember, a form of inquiry and discussion between individuals, based on asking and answering questions to stimulate critical [exchange] and to illuminate ideas. It is a dialectical method, often involving a discussion in which the defense of one point of view is questioned; one participant may lead another to contradict themselves in some way, thus strengthening the inquirer's own point. (Wikipedia) But maybe forward to another form of dialectical clarity, if a more effective such relationship to one another can be visualized? I recall that when I was about seventeen, in the late 1930s in the depths of the depression, I accompanied a friend to a party in a badly run-down house in the poorest part of my home town. It was one of the first times I had ever gotten smashed. I found myself off in a corner of the room, talking with a couple, our hosts, who had just been through a long, agonizing wildcat strike, which they had lost. As I remember that party, they described in detail to me and a few others their rage, piling up over years, at the appallingly bad conditions of work that had caused them to act together to try to change things, their radical vision of a better world, the months of facing off against every resource that their powerful employer threw at them - strike-breaking, beatings and scabs, being sacked, cops interfering with picket lines, false accusations causing repeated arrests - all of the tactics that a corporation has at their disposal including the backing of the law and the state. They recounted how they were left, after prolonged, unsuccessful resistance, with months of unpaid rent, irate landlord and threats of eviction, running out of food, sending children off to school with no breakfast or lunch, efforts at solidarity and sharing of dwindling resources, illness and fatigue and bitterness and ultimately abject failure. All they had at the end was each other, sharing their defeat and their impoverished condition, and a lot of unanswered questions. I have never forgotten that party. It's indescribable, really, as a vicarious event. It left its mark on me for life. Unanswered questions. Point is, to me being there and being part of that struggle can be conveyed effectively, but it can't be done either on a narrative, or an abstract, level alone - at least not without placing the abstractions as explanatory, clarifying (historical and materialist) theory in a solid framework of relevant, vivid painful experience, struggle, the ground bass if you will which a great many of us have never personally shared. And it's the most important function we can perform for the time being - along with acting on it, because we find ourselves in a period largely without a program. The suits don't have one, certainly, but neither do we. --- This email is free from viruses and malware because avast! Antivirus protection is active. http://www.avast.com _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Fwd: The Conference Manifesto - NYTimes.com
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * This is a funny essay. I hate conferences, academic or otherwise. I stopped giving presentations some time ago. My last one, at the Left Forum, lasted about six minutes. Most presenters are horrible, without even the rudiments of skill necessary to address an audience. Academic types are usually horrible, boring us just as they must bore their students. And those who are not academics are often awful too, though for other reasons. I'd rather sell books at the Monthly Review table than either attend a session or be a participant in one. The most fun I had at that last conference was chatting with the bartender at the hotel in which I was staying. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Fwd: The Conference Manifesto - NYTimes.com
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Conferences aren't supposed to be fun. They're supposed to be work. And work requires us to tolerate being bored and not falling asleep. If you have a strong record of attending conferences, employers and potential employers know that you will survive three years as the Humanities rep on the Blackboard development committee. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Fwd: The Conference Manifesto - NYTimes.com
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * (Sometimes I think that the chairpeople and panelists at HM conferences have the same expectations.) We have listened for the first five minutes of the talk, just long enough to seize upon a word around which we’ll construct a pseudo-question in the Q. and A. We have asked a panelist if they could “talk a little bit more about that” or “unpack this a little more” or “tease that out some.” http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/05/04/the-conference-manifesto/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Fwd: The Conference Manifesto - NYTimes.com
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * On 5/9/15 7:50 PM, Mark Lause via Marxism wrote: Conferences aren't supposed to be fun. They're supposed to be work. And work requires us to tolerate being bored and not falling asleep. If you have a strong record of attending conferences, employers and potential employers know that you will survive three years as the Humanities rep on the Blackboard development committee. When I told my lovely wife that I was going to the second day of the left elect conference in Chicago on Sunday, she demanded that I spend the day with her instead. I tried unsuccessfully to explain to her that I was *really* interested in the proceedings to no avail. She put it this way. She never spends any time at an academic conference except to give her paper and then that's it. Why would anybody spend all day at a conference let alone two days as is my normal procedure for HM or Left Forum conferences? So I ended up walking around downtown Chicago instead with her. I might blog about my impressions of Chicago at some point. To me it was astounding that I could walk around the heart of a city for 4 hours and not find a single newsstand to buy the NY Times, let alone the Chicago Tribune. Book stores? Just one BN. But what an impressive display of CVS's and Starbucks. Nearly as ubiquitous as NYC's. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Fwd: The Conference Manifesto - NYTimes.com
POSTING RULES NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * When the conference ended, I had promised to award myself with a trip to some Chicago bookstores. I located a few on the map, but couldn't get near them because of the dense traffic, and parking spaces seemed to have been hunted to extinction in Chicago. It's not been the city I enjoyed so much for eleven years. ML _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
