Hi, Angela.
You wrote:
> the more certain i am, the more concise i can be. and this is then
> more than simply saying if these folks were so sure of stuff, they
> would say it more clearly; or perhaps it is saying that, but not as
> a negative judgement.
Work that develops, instead of stating, positions is important,
necessary, and sometimes writing whose style, in some way, actually
reflects the argumentation or subject matter can also be illuminating
and useful (since I don't know Derrida, my example here would be
Adorno, although he's considered modernist rather than post-).
> there are those who raise more than important discussions about the
> relation between aesthetics and politics (like jean-luc nancy) who i
> do take the time to read seriously, and those who i think are pretty
> awful (like baudrillard, or lyotard)
I suppose it comes down to cases, finally.
I don't know Nancy but will give a look if you could point me to a
title. And Baudrillard and Lyotard make me queasy, but for reasons
that have to do with your following comment:
> which is why i continue to think much of the complaints about 'the
> pomos' that comes from marxists has more to do with a rather
> pathological belief that pomo is responsible for taking away the
> glam of marxism in the academy, for making it hard to get a job as a
> marxist in the academy, etc. was it ever any different?
I'm not a student or instructor, but as one influenced and affected by
Marx (does that make me "Marxist"?), it seems that Baudrillard and
Lyotard, and their ilk, treat Marx like a dead dog: irrelevant, a lump
of waste. And this attitude is only part of a position that seems
intended to disable struggle and the possibility of change.
> if the majority of students are destined to be working class (which
> i think is now more than ever true) and
> if there is now the not-so-clean symmetry between productive labour
> and manual labour as there was before (true for me), then the
> academy as a site of class struggle is more than just a banal
> statement, and one that marxists can't take seriously if
> they think it is all ivory-tower stuff. aesthetics no less than the
> philosophy of science or economics is our terrain - especially when
> what was usually regarded as epiphenomenal to the 'base' is i reckon
> now more or less another branch of prodn. (now, there's a
> provocation to end off on....
...And it seems we're back in the "Middle Class/New Class" discussion.
Maybe I'm nuts, but I think the case can be made that students and
knowledge workers are members of the proletariat, and this case can be
made in terms of that hoary old concept, surplus value. But that's
another thread and another provocation.....
--
Curtiss