-Dead Horse Uber Alles

[Daniel F. Vukovich]

Rakesh,

Not surpsingly, you've misrepresented my views about West and NOI.  I wont
argue this again, not least b/c you seem truly, funnily baffled by
abstractions, but nevertheless two quick points: rather than saying West
was "doing it for the sisters," I was saying his decision to "struggle" or
"dialogue" with members of the NOI is politically justifiable, and clearly
dovetails with what he, and Stuart Hall, and Laclau, and perhaps a dozen
other people have theorized and, in Hall's and West's case anyway, have
practiced as a "cultural politics of articulation." (If this sounds Greek
to you, either read these people on this, or don't.  Apparently, the only
way you and Pollitt and other blockheads can argue things is in terms of
factoids and consciousness, so perhaps you shouldnt bother.)  He might be
making a mistake, but unless you factor into your analysis some acount of
where he, or where Malcolm X or where NOI members are coming from, then
your analyses wil suck.  

I said that since one of, if not "the" reason for NOI's "being" amounts to
an anti-racism, then this provides legitimate grounds for such an
involvement. I am also assuming West has quite specific reasons why he
talks with NOI, has insider info, etc; Pollit, not someone known for
intellectual sophistication, either didnt ask such questions or simply
didnt feel like sharing.  

All this amounts to a "theoretical" argument.  I think that, in general,
such arguments have as much purchase on "reality" as empirical ones.  Call
it the Adorno-principle: just b/c something is a "fact" does not mean it is
"true."  You may disagree with this, and also with this: no, the historical
record -- which, by the way, we will never adequately establish -- does not
determine what any group/institution is now, or what it might become in the
future.  At least not "history" in the rather banal, factoid way you seem
to conceptualize it.  Reality, let alone what counts as truth about
reality, is much more complicated than that.

I also said that Kelly's point is a brute fact which needs wrestled with:
the NOI, the family, many other things, mean and are experienced as
different things to "insiders," than these same institutions do to
"outsiders."  This is something which needs negotiated, at least if you
want to do more than merely compile data about the NOI, or about Malcolm X,
etc. West's "dialoguing" or "struggling" is, in this sense, "a black
thing."  If you dont get this, then your claims to analyze "race" are
pathetic, at least vis a vis the US.  But then, you probably believe in
such things as Objectivity.      

If you do not wrestle with the question of what the NOI, Malcolm X,
Farakhan, the family, etc *means* and *does* to these members, then you
will ultimately have understood very little about the NOI and its egregious
policies, or about why it persists and how it -- or anti-racism -- might
persist differently. All you will have will be a bunch of facts -- which no
matter how perfectly "accurate," how damning or how hagiographic they are
-- do not and cannot speak for themselves.  You are trying to reduce an
institution (Malcolm X, NOI) and an event (West's efforts, Malcolm's
"shift") to a compendium of factoids.   

Your conclusion to all this painstaking fact-establishment can only be some
variation of: NOI members are a bunch of sexist, etc idiots, who are
thinking the wrong, false thoughts; they either make the NOI the evil thing
it is, or the NOI makes them the evil things they are. The soluton would
then be to pour the right (the "left") thoughts into their heads (or into
less spolied heads), and have them sign up at our table. 

So, then, we are right back to the intellectually insipid mode of "false
consciousness," where we analyze people and events by noting that their
thoughts are all wrong.  We have got to get all them woogies thinking the
right thoughts.  About X, about NOI, about the yoke of capital,....   


Some final intellectual mumbo-jumbo for you:
   
You are trapped in a philosophy of consciousness and in a strict
subject/object split, imho.  I cannot translate that for you.  But your
assumption seems to be that there exists this thing -- the real Malcom X,
the real NOI, the proletariat-of-color, the IdealGroup, whatever -- around
which we simply need to become conscious.  This real History around which
first we, and then "They" need to become conscious.  And then, things will
fall into place.  Good luck. 

   
----------------------------------------------------
Daniel Vukovich
English; Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory
University of Illinois
Urbana, IL 61801
vukovich at uiuc.edu
ph. 217-344-7843
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