Also, I have to be covinced that the postmodern movement is not just another cyclical episode of Neo-Kantianism, which was critiqued essentially, I guess by Hegel first, and then by Engels and then Lenin in _Materialism and Empirio-Criticism_. When I read some of this stuff sometimes it's like deja vu from 1910, the dualists and agnostics and all of that. deja vu at a higher level on the spiral, you know.
The reason I don't read a lot of it is that there is only so much time to read, and one has to write after so many years of reading ; and I am trying to develop a Marxist theory and practice of subjectivity based more on Marx's theory of alienation and a feminist critique of Marxism ,self-determination theory , Dubosian dual consciousness et. al. But if some people on this list do a concentrated reading and discussion, I am open minded.
I even got a tape of Nietzche's (I can never spell that damn name) works because Foucault was a Nietzchean.
I do formulate a compromise to what I call the fancy Marxists from us vulgar Marxists: Being determines consciousness; however being determines consciousness discontinously. In most of history, being (production and reproduction) is more reciprocally determining with consciousness (culture, ideas, symbols, etc). Only in primarily and ultimately, intermittently, in revolutions is being determinative. Like the roof falling in asserts the law of gravity, but only rarely. In the mean time, in between time, ain't we got fun.
I can see reading the below under this compromise.
I'm especially interested in the postmodern answer as to why the masses don't rebel. Lets start with that straight up. Do we even have to read anything. Can't someone give a quick summary from memory ? Then we could just go out and practice it now.
Charles Brown
Detroit
P.S. On ontology and epistemology, materialism suggests a unity of epistemology and ethics in that the test of truth (ontology) is in practice (experiment and industry).
>>> Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> 11/29 7:59 PM >>>
d-m-c at worldnet.att.net wrote:
>I bought Gender Trouble years ago for a course and
>have read that. So if Butler's a must then I'd rather
>do Psychic Life or Bodies that Matter. Otherwise I'm
>game for anything else--almost--that you n Alec would
>like to read. Maria Gilmore, you game? Paula? Any
>pomo bashers anxious to actually read some of it and
>then *really* bash it. Take it from me, it's much
>more fun that way.
My experience is that these cyberreadings fizzle out. But if we're going for anything I'd vote for the Psychic Life of Power. I'd like to see the anti-pomo'sters actually confront a postie text - espeically one that illuminates several things many "Marxists" are not so eloquent on - why the masses don't rebel, how sexed our subjectivity is, and why we turn when the cop calls us.
Doug