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Dear Angela,
<p>We have one---you should read <u>Plunkitt of Tammany Hall </u>by George
Washington Plunkitt.
<p>It explains all the mysteries of the universe.
<p>Your email pal,
<p>Tom L.
<p>rc-am wrote:
<blockquote TYPE=CITE>I asked:
<p>>pop quiz: who wrote -
<br>>
<br>>"All the second volume of _The German Ideology_ (manuscript
in
<br>>Engel's hand) aims at those who lay claim to what they call 'true
<br>>Socialism'... writers who have adopted certain French and English
<br>>communist ideas and 'amalgamated' them to their 'philosophico-German'
<br>>premises, by considering the French or English texts, precisely, or
<br>>as purely theoretical writings come from 'pure thought', as they
<br>>imagine is the case for the German philosophical systems."
<p>jayson wrote:
<p>>>That is, these German writers abstract those movements from the
<br>particular
<br>needs and historical situation of a particular class--bien sur: the
<br>working
<br>class. So is your question an intervention against idealism,
<br>abstracting
<br>theory from historical practice.<<
<p>me thinks jayson gets the nod for spotting the sense of the quote, if
<br>not the author.
<p>I kind of burdened the citation with more tasks than is fair.
the
<br>first, was to try and trip intuited understandings of a particular
<br>theorist. the second, was to point to an explanation for
why such
<br>intuited understandings might take hold as they have done.
<p>the author is Derrida, from _onto-theology of national humanism
<br>(prolegomena to a hypothesis)_ , olr, 14:1-2, 1992.
<p>the essay discusses, amongst other things, why political and
<br>philosophic 'communication' cannot forget the idiomatic (the specific
<br>situation in which a theory or philosophy emerges), but is nonetheless
<br>compelled to brush up against it for the sake of this communication.
<br>what Derrida warns against is both a nationalism which either wants
to
<br>purify a communication of 'other national idioms',
<p>{{"... a war in the course of which ... you see the enemy within, the
<br>one who in France likes German philosophy too much, who in the USA
is
<br>over-impressed by French philosophy, or in Britain by Continental
<br>philosophy, etc."}}
<p>or wants to absorb them without any trace of their idioms, their
<br>differences - a move which can only be accomplished if one believes
<br>(as grun did, and as I think many in the US do now) that one's own
<br>philosophy is the pure expression of a philosophy without idiom,
<br>I.e..,
<p>{{ " ... as they imagine is the case for the German philosophic
<br>system."}}
<p>also:
<p>"the United States of America have played a quite odd and revealing
<br>role in this question of philosophical nationalism since the beginning
<br>of the nineteenth century. Today it is the market or the Kampfplatz,
<br>as you wish, which is the most open to the greatest intensity of
<br>exchanges, debates, ... it would be easy to show that the USA is the
<br>major place, the obligatory passage for all philosophic circulation,
<br>with all the problems that that poses... among other things the place
<br>today of Anglo-American idiom is the socially and economically the
<br>most powerful legitimating discourse; taking into account also of the
<br>fact ... that there seems to be developing ... a sort of American
<br>nationalist renewal or reaction which claims to defend or restore,
<br>against the European invasion ... a more properly American tradition."
<p>angela</blockquote>
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