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 the rush to global liberal capitalism", not "despite"? Or did I miss your point? >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 understood as if they were rigid >designators; (2) "communism" (in its own pluralities) is not the same as >"Marxism"; (3) both communism and Marxism are historically sited, situated, >inflected, mediated by particular traditions and histories; (4) the proper >name "Marx" is -- in a certain sense -- entirely uncircumventable. >From what I understand you're saying, it sounds like this is roughly the same analysis I remember Derrida making of a number of "authors" when I spent a semester reading Derrida about 8 years ago: that the attempt to pin any "text"/"author" to one form/interpretation/school inevitably fails--that it always slides away from any attempt to claim one form/interpretation as the "true" text/author--but that it's almost impossible not do try to do so (bit unsure about this last part; it's been 8 years). That's an interesting argument, and I believe it. That was one of the useful lessons I learned from pomo 8 years ago, and it's a lesson that had made a hell of a lot of sense to someone like myself who'd been involved in the developmental disability rights movement. Unlike other "civil rights movements," clearly some discrimination against people with disabilities is fair. No one would say it was unfair to prevent people who couldn't see at all from driving cars in large cities (unless, of course, they were from Boston, where no one would notice). The developmental disability rights movement always had to dance around the issue of when a "disability" was a disability, and when it was appropriate to treat people differently based on their "disability"--questions for which we had no good answer. This was particularly tricky given that the definition of how "disabled" someone was--and what their "disability" was--could change radically over time (the most remarkable one being the recent upheaval over facilitative communication). People like Derrida gave me a way of coming to terms with this incredibly frustrating experience, even if I had a hell of a time translating his ideas into language that my parents could understand. :) My question, Steve, is, what more is Derrida saying in _Spectre_ that you think is useful to folks who care about some flavor of Marx/marxism/communism? Like I said, I got those points 8 years ago; surely there's got to be more there. I know this was only a really quick overview, and I'm sure you wrote it really fast, but could you say a little bit more about the conclusions/points Derrida is drawing here? Aside from his usual schtick, what else does Derrida have to tell us about "marx" that would help us out in these scary times? For example, it seems to me that the post-Cold War world has made Marx both more and less relevant: the new global economy makes Marx extremely salient, but at the same time, it's also quite clear that no flavor of Marxism has successfully found a way to talk coherently about class, race, and gender at the same time--and neither has anyeone else. The younger activists I work with simply assume you need to deal with race, class, gender, sexuality, etc. all at the same time and that no one theory is gonna do it; they just mush pieces of several theories together and don't worry about the glaring contradictions. This isn't because they've read lots of pomo texts; it's because they've learned from experience that nothing else works. To them, this doesn't seem so radical; after all, they've grown up under President Bush and Clinton, so they don't expect anything to be coherent. The problem with this approach is that it gives you no clue as to how to sort out what's important to focus on at any one point. For example, in CA, regardless of whether or not affirmative action goes down the tubes on election day, what the hell do we do next? How, concretely, do we decide at any one point where there are opportunities? How do we decide at any point which fights are more/less likely to be worth winning? Is there anything in _Spectre_ where Derrida plays around with these kinds of questions and gives answers which you think are more useful than your typical confused Marxist/feminist/anti-racist mismash? If not, are there any other points that Derrida makes that you think are so powerful that anybody who's serious about social change should go buy _Spectre_ and spend some serious time reading it? One more thing. A few folks have insisted that none of us anti-pomos are at all willing to listen to what they have to say. Please cut it out. I spent three years talking to right-wing rank-and-filers and reading folks like Gingrich, Ralph Reed, etc. (incidentally, Ed Rollin's autobiography is terrific--a must for political junkies and folks who want to understand the Right). I learned a hell of a lot from them, and I gained a much better appreciation of just how much better they are at using language as a weapon, particularly at the grassroots. I think they've got a hell of a lot to teach us. If I can listen seriously to scary-assed Spawn-of-Satan people like Reed, I can certainly listen seriously to lefty pomos. So let's agree to all steer clear of the inuendo and stick to trying to convince each other. Thanks, Anders P.S. >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 scientist after all, but a philosopher, so we shouldn't ask to do >what he didn't set out to do. If I understand what you're saying, I think you're selling philosophers short. A good philosopher who's interested in radical thought should have lots to say that's applicable to contemporary political conditions. If you think I'm off-base, could you say a bit more about why + what role you think "philosophers" should play on the left? (and what is a "philospher" anways? Aren't all "philosphers" re-searchers?)
