>>Apologies if I've misattributed above to Angela. I don't recall
earlier posts that comprised most of her message and I may have
incorrectly followed who was saying what. any listers read Michael
Ryan's _Marxism and Deconstruction_ (1982) which discusses a possible
'articulation' between the two (citing Derrida's identification with an
'open marxism')? Ryan argues that how we read or analyze and how we
organize political and social institutions are related forms of
practice.<<
no apologies necessary, that's what i wrote. but the discussion on deconstruction it seems to me is in the US overburdened by its pragmatist versions (rorty) and a certain reading of 'postructuralism' (or 'what the french do'). but i've also written that there's been a distinct left turn in deconstruction, in its european variants (nancy, agamben, lacoue-labarthe), and on another occassion, that there is a quite important split in deconstruction in the US, especially due to the efforts of gayatri spivak, michael ryan and rebecca comay. none of these people seem to get a mention when the discussion turns to the 'postmodernism' or deconstruction, and it's good to have raised them again, not least to point out the relation between open or autonomist marxism (negri, hardt, bonefeld, etc) and deconstruction. the connection between the two of course is still attention to the forms of class composition (subject formation), 'reading' (in the more expansive sense of that as a theoretical practice), and organisational forms within a sense of changes to the mode of extraction of the surplus, and with constant reference to (as i also wrote) marx's understanding of the shift from formal to real subsumption, and marx's critique of theoretical practice as a transcendental possibility, blueprints, etc. i happen to think this kind of work is both fruitful (albeit not wthout its own impasses) and certainly a more interesting point of departure for any discussion of deconstruction than rorty or even the rather dismal (but thankfully forgotten perhaps) laclau and mouffe. but i think ryan's analyses, whilst still interesting, have not gone very far, or at least last time i looked. the work being done in france and italy though tends to be more interesting, especially as it relates directly to the issues of immigration, refugees, euthanasia, nationalism, citizenship politics, emergent forms of work, etc.
what do you think, Michael?
Angela _________