> But in FJ, these are completely abstract concepts. He took Bob Fitch to
> task in his recent NLR article for putting some flesh on these names,
> denouncing Fitch as a hack conspiracy theorist for daring to suggest -
> based on lots of work in the Rockefeller archives - that The Family shaped
> the development of New York City. (I mean, it's only the area surrounding
> Rockefeller Center, in a state once run by a Governor Rockefeller, that
> Fitch is talking about.) Am I missing something in Fred's conception of
> "capital" and "class"? Or does he actually have any idea of the people,
> social relations, and institutions involved?
He does, the problem is his model of capital and class is essentially rooted in Anglo-American monopoly capitalism circa 1965 -- i.e. this situation where the rest of the world was a helpless dependency of the almighty Ueber-amerikaner, and where our media culture was way ahead of everyone else. This just ain't so anymore. In general, Fred is good on the global issues, but lacks a sense for the local details of capitalism. But of course, the devil is always in the details. Still, I can't think of any other US theorist of his generation who has insisted so strongly that theory is just another form of politics, and actually pulled this off; "Marxism and Form" and "The Political Unconscious" are just chockful of wonderful Marxist readings of literary works, and intelligent applications of pomo/post-struc insights into the field of aesthetics. He did stuff in the early Eighties which Judith Butler hasn't even begun to explore in her own work (though I have high hopes that JB will rise in due course from the abstract to the concrete).
-- Dennis