The Capitol Steps' hilarious lampoon of Bob Dole's subject-object problem
fails to seek a clear basis for this bizarre choice of expression.
Only those who have lived their lives in the Senate chamber or in Kansas
have any idea whether or not it is vintage Dole for this man to hold
himself at
BLS DAILY REPORT, THURSDAY, OCTOBER 30, 1996
RELEASED TODAY: Unemployment rates for most states showed little movement
in September, as 44 states recorded shifts of 0.3 percentage point or less.
The national jobless rate was essentially unchanged at 5.2 percent.
Nonfarm payroll employment
So what's wrong with using words like "fetishism" (a word quite commonly
used in my neighborhood) or "commodity" or "production" or "commodity
production"?
There's nothing wrong per se with these words, but if we want to be useful
to our friends outside academia and the far left, then we've got
Anders, I think it was, asks for someone to discuss the advantages of
post-modern conceptual frameworks. My ignorance is boundless and my time
limited (gotta go teach intro micro to business students -- not what I call
high theory :) though my critique of NC theory, which highlights all the
I appreciate most of the postings to pen-l, despite (or is it because of?)
their difference. I usually find Doug's very interesting and informative.
I rarely delete Jim's without first scanning for gems of wisdom (or better,
bits of gossip). I (rightly or wrongly) associate Anders' name with
Does anyone know the story behind the frequently circulated factoid that
40% of some Yale College class during the 1980s applied to First Boston for
a job?
Doug
--
Doug Henwood
Left Business Observer
250 W 85 St
New York NY 10024-3217
USA
+1-212-874-4020 voice
+1-212-874-3137 fax
email: [EMAIL
At 8:39 AM 11/1/96, Blair Sandler wrote:
And DEVELOPMENT BETRAYED is a book-length critique of modernism (NC theory
comes in for repeated attacks on just that basis) in the form of
development theory and practice, and a post-modern analysis of the need for
and possibilty of sustainable
At 8:40 AM 11/1/96, Joe Medley wrote:
Second, since those critical
evidently don't *get* much from reading "pomo" stuff, why should they waste
time engaging it?
For the same reason I spend so much time studying Wall Street, even though
I despise it - because it is profoundly influential.
At 7:55 PM 10/31/96, Gerald Levy wrote:
Oh, yeah: why don't you ask him to summarize _Capital_ for a 30 second
soundbite for "Nightline"?
How about:
"Beginning with an analysis of that strange but unexamined thing, the
commodity, Marx examines the human social relations behind its creation and
CONTINUING REPRESSION OF YOUNG PEOPLE IN THE SOUTH
South Korean authorities detained 25 people October 17, charging
them under the fascist "national security law" that outlaws
virtually any disagreement with the puppet government. A well-known
student leader Kang Song Mo was among those arrested
Doug Henwood summarized Capital for a 30 second soundbite:
Took me 24 seconds in my radio mode.
Bravo!
Regards,
Tom Walker, [EMAIL PROTECTED], (604) 669-3286
The TimeWork Web: http://mindlink.net/knowware/worksite.htm
I have resisted getting into this new frey about pomo not only because I
don't think people are really "open" to hear things (and there is a pomo
lesson in this itself) but also because I have been very busy out there, on
the street, actually putting some of the lessons of pomo into practice.
Jerry, I had the exact same reaction Doug did. Of course you can't
summarize _Capital_ in thirty seconds but you can bring out its main points
and say what its chief contribution is. Enough anyway, to demonstrate
that it makes an important contribution. So, how about it: _Spectres of
Doug Henwood asked:
What is distinctly modern about the idea of sustainable development?
Doug's comment touches on what is wrong with the label postmodernism and the
implied opposition "modernism/postmodernism". Blair Sandler had refered to
"a *post-modern* analysis of the need for and
Every now and then I have an irresistible impulse to rake the muck. This
is perhaps the most interesting half of Sam Smith*s latest efforts. Note
that he finds that 51 of the largest 100 economies in the world are
corporations (who says that GM should NOT have a planned economy?). Note
Well,
actually the analysis of the world of money begins in Part I of Capital. No?
Antonio Callari
P.S.: maybe I'll just assign the description below to my students, then,
instead of asking them actually to read the much more verbose rendition
Marx himself produced. That would be an index of
So, how about it: _Spectres of
Marx_ in thirty seconds? Or fifteen or ninety if you like.
Tavis
If you think I'm going to summarize Derrida or _Capital_ in 15, 30, or 90
seconds, you've got another thing coming.
My point is that one can *not* legitimately summarize a complex body of
ideas
I think that we should recognize that Doug
Henwood is the first "post-pomo" thinker, :-).
Barkley Rosser
--
Rosser Jr, John Barkley
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Joe Medley wrote,
Tom's two word dismissal of Reading
Capital and Anders' disingenous demand for *any* example of a pomo approach
that would satisfy *his* criteria, are not cute coming from adults.
I wasn't trying to be cute. I was responding in kind to Gerald Levy, who
perhaps was trying to be
There is an an absolutely outstanding and knee-slapping
hilarous review of Gilder's _Wealth and Poverty_ by Stephen
Rousseas in a 1983 (I think) issue of JPKE. Among other
things, Gilder suggests that taxes prevent parents from
giving violin lessons to their children, who then resort to
Tom Walker wrote:
I'm happy to go back to my original complaint about not being able to
determine, in a 20 minute perusal, whether Derrida's Spectre of Marx would
be worth buying and reading. I assure you that I accord much less than 20
minutes to most new books that come into the bookstore.
Well, I guess that settles it. Marx was infallible. ;-)
Regards,
Tom Walker, [EMAIL PROTECTED], (604) 669-3286
The TimeWork Web: http://mindlink.net/knowware/worksite.htm
Jerry wrote,
If one wants short fairy-tale like answers to complex theoretical and
political questions, then perhaps one should revert to reading "Quotations
from Chairman Mao" and, thereby, substitute vacuous slogans and prose for
analysis.
Let's spend some time with this thought. I happen to
Oh, how I hate mechanistic, "machinic" (used just to upset the anti-pomos)
definitions of the failure and success of the Green Revolution like the
reasons given in the forwarded message below. Village relations in
interlinked markets did not change. That's part of problem of "green
revolution"
I am afraid that any attempt to discuss Derrida's _Specters_ won't satisfy
the demand that Tom Walker put on him: "if it had anything to say to
contemporary political conditions or if it was strictly an allusive,
illusive literary dissertation." Derrida is not an empirically minded
social
someone whose work is considered to be anti-Marxist to argue that Marx is
today unavoidable, despite the rush to global liberal capitalism.
isn't Marx unavoidable because of the rush to liberal global capitalism?.
..Michael
The point is not about intellectual laziness. It's about communication.
If we have to go back to an original work to discuss the ideas contained
in it, then its concrete relevance is not clear. Example: Many (most?)
of us have read at least most of the three volumes of Capital. Yet we
Hi Folks!
The other day I was at my dentist's office for checkup and
cleaning. As the dental assistant was scraping my teeth I was thinking: is
she blue collar or white collar worker? I know she is "unproductive"
worker. Can someone care to comment?
Fikret Ceyhun wrote:
The other day I was at my dentist's office for checkup and
cleaning. As the dental assistant was scraping my teeth I was thinking: is
she blue collar or white collar worker? I know she is "unproductive"
worker. Can someone care to comment?
Gerald Levy
Doug,
in response to Medley's question about why you bother with pomo, you
replied (below) with a list of the bad, in your view, effects of pomo on
politics. You don't go as far as Cardinal Ratzinger went, under orders from
the Pope, to chastise the theological innovations of liberation theology
I am finding this discussion interesting, but let me begin with a note,
asking that we not get so personal with this stuff.
Let me also make a confession. My wife reads quite a bit of the French
literature. I tease her by calling them pretentalists. Much of the
little bit of the work that I
Tom Walker is on to something good in his analysis of pomo: there always
have been pomo moments within modernism; and pomo does not exist without
the reference point of modernism. That, at least, seems to be the beginning
of a sane discussion.
Doug Henwood asked:
What is distinctly modern about
The Vancouver SunOctober 28, 1996 PAGE
A1 / FRONT
INFO HIGHWAY A POSSIBLE ROAD
TO JOB RUIN, B.C. WARNED
Labor and community groups tell a
conference of their concerns
William Boei, Sun
Michael,
a couple of points in response to your comments (which I find
unobjectionable in tone because they are not dismissive, but rather ask for
dialogue.)
Now, to business. As I read Steve's and Antonio's comments, they seem to
tell us that pomo sensitize us to the condition of others and
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
Recently Steve Cullenberg writes:
Specifically and telegraphically, at least four points emerge from
Derrida's Specters of Marx (1) The proper names "Marx" and/or "Marxism"
have always already been plural nouns, despite their grammatical form, and
despite the fact that they have been
At 8:39 AM 11/1/96, Blair Sandler wrote:
And DEVELOPMENT BETRAYED is a book-length critique of modernism (NC theory
comes in for repeated attacks on just that basis) in the form of
development theory and practice, and a post-modern analysis of the need for
and possibilty of sustainable
Most postmodern writing doesn't sufficiently appreciate the treachery of its
own ground (or "ungroundedness"). For example, it's easy to sneer at Marx's
"essentialism" as Laclau and Mouffe did; it's much harder to establish a
unequivocal position from which to do the sneering. To continue with
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.
Jim,
Dear Steve,
Thanks for your capsule summary of _Specters_; it was much appreciated.
But I think there was something powerful in
someone whose work is considered to be anti-Marxist to argue that Marx is
today unavoidable, despite the rush to global liberal capitalism.
Don't you mean "because of
Two (relatively) brief comments:
(1) One doesn't have to be a fan of post-modernism to appreciate that the
old forms of "discourse" among leftists leave much to be desired. One only
has to read recent exchanges on PEN-L to appreciate this point. I don't
know: maybe I'm just getting old and
Antonio, it would help me to understand your position if you could explain
exactly how pomo helped you to work with the battered women.
--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929
Tel. 916-898-5321
E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Inuit naming traditions result in given names that are not at all uniquely
referring except through context and background information. This bothered
white bureaucrats and also missionaries. The bureaucrats some of whom had
come from the armed forces decided to adapt the dog tag scheme and issue
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
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