[PEN-L:2680] Duke University's literature department

[William S. Lear]

On Thu, January 28, 1999 at 19:02:30 (-0500) Doug Henwood writes:
>Dennis R Redmond wrote:
>
>>That may be true for the
>>neoclassical goons who legitimate late capitalism's continuing predations,
>>but Butler is someone *questioning* this. But maybe it's precisely this
>>resistance to thinking anything new, this virulent attack on even the
>>faintest, most tenuous notion of postmodern solidarity, which explains why
>>we don't have a Left in this benighted country...
>
>I find it fascinating, and no doubt revealing in ways that I can't yet
>understand, that people criticize Butler & the posties in general for being
>both obscure and nothing new. (And not just separate groups of people - the
>same individuals have made both charges, some of them right here in this
>list.) In both cases, it seems like an anxiety is defused through a
>dismissal: either they're incomprehensible (perhaps deliberately so) or
>irrelevant.
>
>Where does the anxiety come from? I think that a lot of old-style leftists
>want to blame the depoliticization of the masses and the rather sorry state
>of Marxism on the evil influence of postmodernism, however loosely defined
>(if at all) - and the relative success, in intellectual circles, of
>postmodernism, however loosely defined (if at all) chafes badly. And,
>content-wise, insofar as the anti-pomoistas have taken on any of the
>content, the emphasis on instability and uncertainty is also
>anxiety-provoking; even Marxists can long for the days when verities were
>verities and classes knew their place. But if, as Jameson argues,
>"postmodernism" is the cultural logic of our phase of capitalism (calling
>it late capitalism is too optimistic for me), then you can't blame the
>theorists for their concerns. As the old guy said, all that's solid melts
>into air.

Jesus Doug, I'm stunned, this is really insulting.  How am I anywhere
near an "old-style leftist"?  How am I concerned about the "sorry
state of Marxism"?  I really could care less about the "relative
success, in intellectual circles, of postmodernism".  Do you really
think I have a problem with "instability and uncertainty"?  Stop the
psychoanalyzing and decode her for us if you think she has something
new to say --- or would doing so provoke anxiety of a different sort
in you?

Because Noam Chomsky's imprimatur appears on the back of Sokal and
Bricmont's book, and because he is (largely) dismissive of
postmodernism, does that make him a victim of anxiety too?  When I
dismiss creationism, am I suffering from anxiety?

(Huff!)

Bill