From Insult to Manual Labor

Vikash Yadav vikash1 at ssc.upenn.edu
Fri Dec 15 12:04:52 PST 2000


Leo,

As a side note to your discussion... Have you looked at Terrell Carver's _The Postmodern Marx_?

He deconstructs the hunting and fishing passage and argues that it was a joke. I don't have the book with me ... maybe others can comment.

Vikash Yadav

Leo Casey writes:


: workerist _intellectuals_. It reminds me of the line
: in the _German Ideology_, where Marx waxes poetic
: abour Communism in terms of hunting in the morning,
: fishing in the afternoon and doing philosophy after
: dinner. It is a rather pregnant formulation, begging
: for deconstruction -- how interesting that he would
: choose the main activities of a hunting and gathering
: society [the return to the glorious, unalienated
: past], but present them in a form that evokes their
: status in the modern world -- as hobbies and
: avocations. The real world of relying on hunting and
: gathering is not so idyllic. So, too, for those who
: find glory in manual labor -- when you have to do it
: to stay alive, it's a different story.



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