Doug said re: Carroll:
>Why do you always have to adopt the tone of >Yaweh speaking from on high?
The other day I was looking through a book of Chinese political art. (Wish I still had the Foreign Languages Press book with the photos of the Cultural Revolution opera, Nixon saw, "Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy, " for a while I thought Brian Eno musta been a Maoist 'cuz of that) One of the paintings that I looked at had Mao at Yenan giving a talk, maybe his talks on literature. I look at Mao, and see Carroll. Anyway, Carroll's tone strikes me (and others?) as the voice from on high, (ex cathedra?) disembodied in that he, is always polemicizing against psychological reductionism while discounting the role of affects and emotions, drives, complexes, overdetermined or not, Freudian, Lacanian, whatevah, in that angry reproving tone. I'm not expressing myself very well but, I find it paradoxical that one who declaims in such an objectivistic manner cannot own up to the role that emotions play and played in the process of all our radicalizations. Anger Is An Energy as Johnny Rotten said early on in Public Image Limited's career.
And since I'm sure that all that rant above will get the waters boiling some more, here is a side comment to add to Nathan Newman's (who I usually find to my right, but damn he argues his case so well!) of a few days ago. He expressed agreement with Old Left and Next Left/Gen X critiques of the New Left. (Yup I'm not saying there was one New Left, btw) of the New Left. Who are these GenX'ersof the Next Left (please banish GenX from the discourse!)? And, anyway, some fifteen years ago, in Saul Landau's and Paul Jacob's Vintage paperback anthology of the New Left there was Irving Howe's 1965 piece from Dissent. In retrospect, anything to Irving's blast? Or Eugene Genovese's piece that Socialist Review (or was still Socialist Revolution) circa 1977 ran reprinted from the Italian edition of his , "In Red andBlack,"essays. Carl Oglesby, Notes For A Decade Ready For The Dustbin, " reprinted in the anthology edited by Mitchell Goodman, "The Movement Towards A New America, " or Elinor Langer's piece in Working Papers For A New Society around 1974. All these pieces make good points, and were written at the time or shortly afterward, so don't suffer from that Gitlinite revisionism or partiality, at least Todd's.
Michael Pugliese, still Waiting For Lefty who like alot of folks has not only 60's nostalgia but even more a case of 30's nostalga, fueled by the book by the late Michael Sprinker and meeting the son of Clifford Odets, Walt, a while back. Clifford did some remarkable painting too.