Marx

Dennis R Redmond dredmond at oregon.uoregon.edu
Thu Mar 16 16:17:16 PST 2000


On Thu, 16 Mar 2000, Doug Henwood wrote:


> I heard a rumor that a member of this list was recently complaining
> elsewhere that it isn't "Marxist." Guilty as charged.

Adorno talked a lot about the politics of naming things; nominalism, the laeling process by which society classifies things, is shot through with the reifying logic of that society. Even the most innocent attempt to name something runs head-on into the reality of corporate logos, brand-names, icons, and the vast, dripping machinery of the consumer culture.

One of the interesting things about the Web culture is the astonishing plethora of e-names out there; every time I punch up Planet Quake there's another set of punning handles, a few of which are surely the same person under a different nom de telecharge. It kinda makes sense: turn the text-mutation against the total system. Where everything is supposedly known, anonymity is revolutionary.

-- The E-Critter Formerly Known as Dennis



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