Queer Angels of History (was RE: Butler....)

Charles Brown CharlesB at CNCL.ci.detroit.mi.us
Fri Feb 12 14:09:56 PST 1999


Angela,

I'm not clear what is meant by this mourning Marx "trope". Presumably, it doesn't mean mourning Marx's actual death, but ??? It seems to be mourning MarxISM.

I prefer to think of Nietszche and Foucault as dead, if that is it. Why not Butler is mourning Nietszche and Foucault ? Making them sovereigns.

Marx and Engels' ideas are alive and well in the sense that capitalism continues to operate essentially as they analyzed it.

Einstein is dead too. You know. How now ?

Lenin Lives !

Charles


>>> "rc-am" <rcollins at netlink.com.au> 02/12 11:05 AM >>>

Yoshie asked some time back whether or not butler might be thought of as mourning marx's death. aren't we all; or perhaps I should say, the only appropriate stance today is to go through a mourning that would allow us to critique and remember.

there is something hideous about those marxisms which refuse to allow for grieving, or the holding of a wake, drunken or otherwise. they insist, still, on calling up history as a set of souvenirs. Benjamin on souvenirs: "The souvenir is the secularized relic. ... The souvenir is the counterpart of so-called 'experience'. It marks the increased estrangement that consists in drawing up an inventory of one's intimate possessions." against this, Benjamin counseled a remembrance of history, not as celebration, but as 'saving' for a grief beyond restitution and beyond conciliation.



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list