Spivak sez...

Dennis R Redmond dredmond at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU
Wed Oct 13 16:35:04 PDT 1999


On Wed, 13 Oct 1999, Jim heartfield wrote:


> 100000 at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU>, Dennis R Redmond
> <dredmond at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU> writes
> >think in sentences. It's the grammar, the space between the sentences,
> >through which the lightning-bolt of content flashes.
>
> Eloquent, but meaning what, exactly?

Thoughts do not exist in a vacuum; each concept requires other concepts, to transcend it, and to inform its content. What Adorno called "constellations", the movement of thought in vast, dizzying networks, which must push through the conceptual abstraction to rise to the concrete. Eagleton seems to be griping because Spivak is pushing at the limits of signification; the review has this implicit view, that Third Worlders should be hauling AK-47s in the jungle or something instead of teaching in academies. It reminds me of one of Eagleton's readers, I think the one on Western Marxism, where capsule summaries of thinkers are prefaced by this scorecard; Sartre was described as "never really a Marxist" or some such nonsense. Terry is pretty cool, but sometimes you get this latent dogmatic impulse even in the most well-meaning non-dogmatists.

-- Dennis



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