Perry Anderson

kjkhoo at softhome.net kjkhoo at softhome.net
Fri Feb 28 19:34:27 PST 2003


At 3:05 PM -0500 28/2/03, Doug Henwood wrote:
>joanna bujes wrote:
>
>>At 02:07 PM 02/28/2003 -0500, Gregory wrote:
>>>Erudite, logical, dangerously wrong.
>>
>>I agree. Anderson's getting old and displaying the dangers of
>>tenured academic life. He argues like a man who believes that
>>nothing happening out there will trouble his life in the least.
>
>It's not just being an academic - Anderson is a landed aristocrat
>and the son of a diplomat.

As a matter of curiosity, why the deep animus, one which you so rarely show towards others?

Being a landed aristocrat and son of a diplomat account for the privileges that make for an easy erudition, perhaps for a 'magisterial view' of things. And while it may account to some degree for political tendencies, there isn't a necessity there -- except to the crudest materialists, which you aren't.

Hence the query.

But in any case, I think Anderson does a service in drawing out the similarity of assumptions for many, and in his concluding bits -- which will likely draw charges of "soft on Saddam" from some on this list.

Still, I hope he has underestimated the Euro-American multitudes in suggesting that the difference in style is what accounts for the difference in response. I would like to think that somewhere, somehow, something tripped, and people decided that enough is enough and are drawing their line.

For those into Saddam-Hitler analogies, perhaps somewhere the trip was an expansionistic Germany-expansionistic US analogy. Which actually works a whole lot better than the Saddam-Hitler analogy.

kj



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