>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,
I thought I had; but obviously I must not have been clear. So, let me try
it again.
First, (and this is a point I had not made), my choice of this community as
a site for organizing/activism was itself something unusual for a
traditional marxist to do. I don't think it is too debatable that
traditionally Marxists have privileged labor (I mean workplace organizing
and unions) as THE site for activism. I think the choice of the site of
struggle is an important political and theoretical question. About this, to
avoid misunderstanding, I am NOT proposing that Marxists give up working
with the already-constituted, traditional working class sites; only to
enlarge the area of activism. This enlargement, i think, was, at least for
me, justified by (or should I say, through: for others, it might come in a
different way) pomo. To borrow a phrase from Cornel West, Pomo gave me
philosophical permission to privilege sites of struggle other than just
already-constituted workplace sites.
I should add, parenthethically, that there are certain implications
of this strategic "opening." First, informed by practice, I have begun to
read Marx himself differently--e.g., I have now a very different take on
the theory of commodity fetishism (and I am not referring just to the
article Jack and I have on that). Second, the enlargement of the sphere of
activity means an enlargement for the constituency of the left, and any
good politician will tell you that a differently constituted constituency
requires a different strategy--and a theoretical arsenal open to
difference.
The second way in which pomo helped me in the work with battered women
(this is the point I thought I was making in the original message) was that
it let me accept a different discourse and consciousness as a player in the
project (the discourse and consciousness of the battered women themselves,
different from the traditional marxist discourse with which I entered the
stage) and, then, work to find ways of creating a strategic alliance
between this discourse (about the social construction of gender roles) and
my discourse (about the social construction of class). That's quite
important, but it is also a consequence of the strategy in point 1 above of
enlarging the struggle to constituencies other than the traditional labor
constituencies.
Jim Devine, I think, thinks that all of this opening to other
constituencies is already a fait accomplí, and he points to Michael
Albert's Z as a vehicle for it. But he points out that Michael Albert is a
modernist (he's right. Michael is quite proud of being a modernist: he had
a degree in physics before turning to economics). The thing I would point
out is that, being a modernist, in order to open up to a variety of sites
of struggle, Michael found it necessary to reject Marxism. I don't. A
pretty BIG difference, or it should be to someone like Jim.
Antonio
>--
>Michael Perelman
>Economics Department
>California State University
>Chico, CA 95929
>
>Tel. 916-898-5321
>E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Antonio Callari and/or Elisabeth King-Callari
939 Martha Ave
Lancaster, PA 17601
Phone 717 397-3228
FAX 717 397-1790
e-mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
