Derrida down under

rc-am rcollins at netlink.com.au
Fri Sep 24 00:49:21 PDT 1999


Michael wrote:


> Barbara Foley who distinguishes between marxism's historical subject -
capital/labor relationship - located in material life and class struggles (social movement) and deconstruction's formalized, binary oppositions that elevate indeterminability to status of historical subject and block the possibility of resolution or synthesis. ('The Politics of Deconstruction,' _Rhetoric and Form_, 1985). <

unless you are going to claim that marxism regards class subjectivity as fully accomplished (which you don't), then i'm not sure that this is as much of a distinction as you claim. that is, deconstruction does not regard subjectivity as indeterminable or without determination. quite the contrary. it does however claim that the material life of this subjectivity exceeds any attempts to grasp it WITHIN discourse. and, it is because of this excess that no discourse can fully succeed in immobilising reality within the framework of any binary contructions or a fixed dialectic. it is therefore, and contrary to claims that it priveliges theory, a claim about the limits of theory.

if there is a dispute here, it is not between marxism and deconstruction, but rather over the question of resolution and synthesis. and, unless i've missed the revolution, the historical conditions which would allow for any kind of resolution or synthesis in theory have not arrived, and they have certainly not arrived within theory. after all, didn't marx say someplace that the distinctions between various binaries (state-society, mind-body, etc) are going to be around for as long as the historical conditions which produced them are? claims that theory can acheive a synthesis or resolution seem to me to be contra as much marx as deconstruction.


> Both Foley and Peter Dews (_Logics of Disintegration_, 1987) show how
class is elided in Ryan's and Spivak's focus on the margins (which is probably necessary at certain historical junctures). <

i don't think that class is elided. or at least not in the sense that you imply here. surely attention to 'the margins' is a crucial part of the formation of the proletariat into a class (to use the formulation from the CM)? not just necessary at certain historical junctures, but an inherent part of class formation. when would a focus on the non-marginal be justifiable if the question is one of unifying the class vis a vis capitalism?


> Moreover, R&S's
antagonism to centralism is, in the long run, politically debilitating (in my view). Ryan's 'what is to be done' chapters actually pre-figure Laclau and Mouffe in positing a post(really anti)-marxist, left-pluralism. <

yes, and these are the limitations of any attempt to expand the range of subjectivities within coalition or alliance politics. but not for all that politically debilitating, unless you can point to occassions recently where a centralised mass organisation has been able to accomplish mobilisations, then i think it might be too hasty to write these formations off entirely, even if there remain key problems with them. (laclau and mouffe though are not particularly interesting, and have already been made redundant by the extent to which mobilisations have been possible by virtue of a homogenisation rather than a pluralisation. ie., we are all subject to the law of value at the end of the 20th C, and nowhere has this been more apparent than in the j18 actions, which were highly decentralised but had a singular enemy in sight.)


> In any event, I've yet to participate in a political action or group
where someone told me that they were involved because they'd read or practiced deconstructive literary criticism or post-stucturalist social theory (which is not to say that such are devoid of utility or have had no influence on some folks' politics, including my own). <

i can't recall anyone who claimed they participated in anything because they read any particular book. honestly, is this how people figure their political attachments? do you do something because you read a book, or do you regard a book as important because it speaks to some questions and attachments you already have?


> For whatever above is worth, Michael Hoover (whose use of decade old
and older references is sign that I don't read much of this stuff anymore)<

that's a shame. if you ever feel the inclination to leave the 'eighties behind, i'd suggest recent writings by Lacoue-Labarthe, Nancy, Rebecca Comay, Robert Young, Agamben...

Angela _________



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