Thanks to Steve Cullenberg for summarizing _Spectres_. Steve's summary is
pretty close to the impression I got looking at the book. My decision not to
buy and read the book had more to do with my needs and interests as a reader
than with an abstract standard of what any book referring to Marx should
accomplish.
Had _Spectres of Marx_ been a journal article, say in Diacritics, I probably
would have read it and perhaps would have benefited from its insights. If
the year was 1982, I definitely would have read it as a journal article and
might have read it as a book. Perhaps 20 years from now I will read the book
with pleasure.
I'm simply stating the truism that a text encounters readers in historically
specific circumstances.
>From time to time, I teach a workshop in plain language writing. This
doesn't mean I think everything should be written so that it can be read by
someone with a grade 8 education. But it does mean I'm aware of the range of
reading (and writing) abilities and the variety of reasons for "difficulty".
It also means that I have trained myself to read difficult prose. I'm as
'comfortable' with the jargon of the civil engineer as I am with that of the
education bureaucrat or the deconstructionist. In fact, alongside much
officialese, Derrida reads as clearly as the Gettysburg Address.
One of the exercises I use in my workshop is to look at a piece of writing
and get students to identify the author's intended message, audience and
purpose. This is classical rhetoric ("bonehead" English Composition 101). I
do something similar when scanning material to decide whether or not to read
it. My judgements usually break down into answers to two questions: does the
text clearly expose the author's intended message, audience and purpose?;
and do I, as a reader, have any affinity with or stake in that message,
audience and purpose?
Note that by invoking the authority of "classical rhetoric" in the preceding
paragraph, I am inviting a comparison between the pomo/modernism face-off
and earlier disputes between classicism and romanticism and the ancients and
the moderns. *Verily, saith the preacher, there's nothing new under the
sun*. What all of these disputes have in common is the prerequisite of
*reducing* texts to one or the other of the categories in question. But
since there is always already a "romantic Marx" and a "classicist Marx" (a
plurality!), a "modernist Derrida" and a "post-modernist Derrida", an
"ancient Aristotle" and a "modern Aristotle", the categories and the
categorization turn out to be arbitrary and invidious.
But I digress. To bring me back to my point (the historically and
subjectively specific circumstances of readers vis-a-vis texts) I will quote
Verne Ball:
>What if the ability to communicate in different "registers" - as they say
>in linguistics - is more important than not speaking academese? (So yeah,
>a good summation of a lot more of Derrida and Negri would be really
>helpful, but I'd prefer it in the form of a comic book that I could peruse
>for a little longer - surely more than 15 minutes. Derrida could make it.
Exactly. Or, to put it slightly differently, what if "explanation" is not
all there is? What happens when we expand the range of cultural expression
to include not just philosophical texts and didactic comic books, but
painting, music composition, architectural design, performance, etc. In my
view, such a broadening of scope requires us to simultaneously examine
_both_ the material conditions of cultural production and the internal
tendencies of the "work of art" itself.
And this brings us back to Walter Benjamin, who in my estimation continues
to have something to say to contemporary political conditions in spite of --
or perhaps because of -- his philosophical erudition.
Regards,
Tom Walker, [EMAIL PROTECTED], (604) 669-3286
The TimeWork Web: http://mindlink.net/knowware/worksite.htm
