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

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Angela wrote:
>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.

Not quite. I wrote: "Isn't Butler mourning 'the death of Marx'?" See,
sometimes quotation marks make a crucial difference. To me, Marx has left
us a living legacy, and we may still inherit the earth (hopefully in a
decent working order). Nothing is guaranteed, of course, but I say, that's
what makes it interesting and worth trying.

To Butler, and alas also to Foucault (much as I like his writing, which he
called 'an invitation to an experience'), Marx has become 'Marx,'
transformed through the mourning of '68. Post-structuralism is a
dirge--melancholic and self-reflexive, seducing us to think of a temporary
defeat as Death. (Music: 'Adagietto' from Mahler's Symphony No. 5.
Ambience: The Vienna of Freud. Digression: Have you seen Daniel Schmid's
_La Paloma_ by any chance? The film embodies the Adorno fragment you sent
us: "Decadence is the nerve centre at which the dialectic of progress
becomes ... bodily appropriated by consciousness.")

good mourning,

Yoshie