> One of the reasons I started this list was to try to do something
> about all these awful splits - cultural/real politics,
amen.
> Marxists/postmodernists, class/identity, etc. - to which we can now
> add anarchist/Marxist. Do the masses of Seattle protesters, whether
> middle-aged Steelworkers or young anarchists, have what I see as a
> satisfying analysis of capitalism? No, they don't. But then I
> couldn't have organized anything like that action, or actions (since
> they were very plural). We all need each other.
the vehemence with which some people insist that 'untheorized' movements and actions are ipso facto deficient is really tire- some. and (take your pick) disingenuous or deluded to the core, too, since the criteria by which something's relative state of 'theorization' is judged are only subjective anyway: the prac- tical result of such a critique would be not that something is theorized but, rather, that it becomes bogged down in endless squabbling in pursuit of a mastery established on the plane of commentary.
let's put it this way: you'd have done a damned sight better job of organizing seattle than someone rather more doctrinaire (say, yoshie) would have managed.
if advocates of theorization as a primary goal would admit that their views are a subspecies of intolerance, their bluster would be much easier to suffer through. but to do would be to admit that the primacy they claim for their analyses is little more than a self-serving evaluation, and that, at root, their anal- yses are as subject to contingency as any other human action.
this kind of remark typically elicits howls about 'relativism,' which more often than not occupies the same structural position in their discourse that 'satan' does in that of an inquisitor.
note that nothing i've said can be construed as a critique of theorization; rather, it's only a critique of the use of its supposed negation as a critique.
cheers, t