On Fri, 5 Feb 1999 10:37:01 -0500 Carl Remick <cremick at rlmnet.com>
writes:
>Judith Butler has been named winner of the fourth annual Bad Writing
>Contest, sponsored by the journal Philosophy and Literature. ( NB, Web
>link below.)
Philosophy and Literature is published by the National Association of "Scholars," a right-wing group that sees itself as an anti-MLA. Their mission is to purge campuses of feminism, Marxism, post-structuralism, multiculturalism, and just about any other "ism" that threatens to overtake the overpriced universities where junior and sis matriculate.
Frederic Jameson won this very same award a few years ago.
Let's face it: this shit has nothing to do with academic purity and everything to do with squelching critical thought. You may not think the various "posts" and "isms" pose a threat to the status quo, but the Right obviously thinks so if they're throwing around all this cash.
Regardless of what Marxists may feel about the group they incorrectly label "postmodernists," I think it's time for intellectuals of the Left to close ranks. The other side makes no distinctions between Judith Butler and Noam Chomsky.
Maybe "Left Conservatives" is exactly the right description for those who would join the William Bennetts and Dinesh D'Souzas of the world in their defense of "rationalism," "Western civilization," the "canon," and all those other values the Right claims to have a monopoly on.
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