Rob Schaap wrote:
>I've only just crawled, battered but unbowed (coz, bugger it, I still think I
>was in the right of it), from an LBO-Talk skirmish on this sort of question,
>and I do not propose to repeat the dose here, but do think (as I'm sure Lou
>does) that Hardt makes too little of the problems Marxian thinking and postie
>thinking have with each other. Nietzchean total-critique-of-truth is a
>*fundamental* problem, for mine, yet marks quite a lot of postie thinking..
>And that neo-Weberian tendency to look to the rationality of modernity as the
>point of departure, rather than class, takes us away from history on a
>hopelessly idealist plane.
Why the impulse always to point out the deficiencies of a text -
either to quote some shred to denounce it, or poke about looking for
irreconcilable differences? Why not read something and say some of
it's good, some of it's not, and let it inspire some thought? Yeah, I
have some differences with H&N's Empire, but it also helped me see
the world in a fresh way. Is that the problem? That you have to think
about ambiguities and novelties, when the old verities are so much
more comforting?
Doug
----
from REMARKS ON MARX, Michel Foucault interviewed by Duccio Trombadori
[Semiotext(e), 1991]
Duccio Trombadori: But still apropos of polemics, you have also stated
clearly that you don't like and will not accept those kinds of arguments
"which mimic war and parody justice." Could you explain to me more clearly
what you meant by saying this?
Michel Foucault: What is tiresome in ideological arguments is that one is
necessarily swept away by the "model of war." That is to say that when you
find yourself facing someone with ideas different from your own, you are
always led to identify that person as an enemy (of your class, your
society, etc.). And we know that it is necessary to wage combat against the
enemy until triumphing over him. This grand theme of ideological struggle
has really disturbed me. First of all because the theoretical coordinates
of each of us are often, no, always, confused and fluctuating, especially
if they are observed in their genesis.
Furthermore: might not this "struggle" that one tries to wage against the
"enemy" only be a way of making a petty dispute without much importance
seem more serious than it really is? I mean, don't certain intellectuals
hope to lend themselves greater political weight with their "ideological
struggle" than they really have? A book is consumed very quickly, you know.
An article, well.... What is more serious: acting out a struggle against
the "enemy," or investigating, together or perhaps divergently, the
important problems that are posed? And then I'll tell you: I find this
"model of war" not only a bit ridiculous but also rather dangerous. Because
by virtue of saying or thinking "I'm fighting against the enemy," if one
day you found yourself in a position of strength, and in a situation of
real war, in front of this blasted "enemy," wouldn't you actually treat him
as one? Taking that route leads directly to oppression, no matter who takes
it: that's the real danger. I understand how pleasing it can be for some
intellectuals to try to be taken seriously by a party or a society by
acting out a "war" against an ideological adversary: but that is disturbing
above all because of what it could provoke. Wouldn't it be much better
instead to think that those with whom you disagree are perhaps mistaken; or
perhaps that you haven't understood what they intended to say?
