>>> Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> 01/05/00 04:41PM >>>Oh I had in mind several posters to several e-lists - we both know
who they are - and people I run into here & there, like Labor Party
types or Monthly Review authors and editors. There was the great
brouhaha in the wake of the 1996 Rethinking Marxism conference, about
which there was great complaint (my voice among the complainers,
before I came to know better) that it had been hijacked by those evil
posties. It was only what, two years ago, not the 1980s, that MR
published In Defense of History - history's abusers being those evil
posties.
But you have a point; as Ted Byfield might put it, postmodernism is so 20th century.
((((((((((((((
CB: Except the Marxist criticisms don't usually say those "evil" posties. The criticisms are more specific as in "neo-Kantianism" and "idealism" or "opportunist" ;and not with moralizing terms, such as "evil". And some of the Marxist criticisms of post mods are not unfriendly, but as between political cousins. When there was a Judith Butler reading on this list, some Marxists participated. Why did that reading just fall off the list ? Wasn't Marxists who did that.
So, this characterization of Marxists as somehow just making mindless ,dogmatic criticisms of the whoevers ( another technique is there really isn't such a thing as postmods, or they are so diverse that you can't use one word to describe "them". Sort of anti-essentialism turned to polemical self-service) is not entirely accurate.
Those "Evil" Stalinists would be more fitting as a way to mock postmod critiques of Marxists, as in Doug's post earlier, straightup , reflex redbaiting.
This idea that somehow Marxists are inappropriately criticizing postmods, along with the tone of indignation is a bit phony or something. Why shouldn't Marxists criticize "them" ? Don't "they" critique Marxism-Leninism and Marxist-Leninists ? I mean the 1996 Conference Rethinking Marxism is not quite the whole nine yards here. Myself, I wasn't even there. There may be by now, more of this debate on this list than at the 1996 Conference, and the Sokal book combined.
Anyway , the tone of indignation and weariness is a sort of posture to gain advantage in the argument by the defenders of , what shall we call it, the plurality of socalled postmodisms.
CB