Adolph Reed

Thomas Mertes mertes at ucla.edu
Thu Jun 11 11:58:05 PDT 1998


I think that slamming Adolph Reed without him being able to respond is politically unsound. Given that this is a "public" forum - he should be able to defend his positions. He has been an exemplar of the Praxis/theory that everyone here seems to subscribe to. His invovlement in the Labor Party has been critical. It certainly is not revolutionary but is far better than our present one party rule. Likewise, his work on Jackson and DuBois while not perfect is far better than most of the crap that is written. I am all for a dialectical discussion, but I am against running down a comrade in a public forum without his knowledge seems to me very divisive.


>Of course Reed, since he knows that literary scholarship is simply
corrupt, would never bother to read Adell or Spillers. Which brings me to the recent book, W.E.B. Du Bois and American Political Thought. If you need to diagnose my distaste for Reed, start there. Only after reading that book did I finally see, clearly, what a lightweight he is.

Thomas E. Mertes, Administrator 4355G Public Policy Building Center for Social Theory

and Comparative History Box 951484, UCLA Los Angeles, CA 90095 office (310) 206-5675 fax 206-4453



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