Deleuze & Guattari, Zizek on Arendt (More from Brennan)

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Wed Jan 8 21:06:51 PST 2003


At 9:50 PM -0600 1/8/03, Jeffrey Fisher wrote:
>>I believe they have mostly been counter-productive rather than
>>counter-revolutionary, but any impact that they might have had, one
>>way or another, must be small, given the sort of audiences for whom
>>they write, despite favorable write-ups in the mass media that
>>_Empire_ has received. Brennan's criticism is well written and
>>worth reading, though.
>
>they sure get a lot of flak for people who write for such a small
>audience. why not just ignore them if they're so insignificant?

I already did my share of criticism here and PEN-l shortly after _Empire_ came out, and I haven't commented upon the authors since then. I'll leave it alone again from now on.

At 9:50 PM -0600 1/8/03, Jeffrey Fisher wrote:
>am i right that empire is one of the biggest books of left (or
>"left," if you prefer) political theory in quite some time?

We leftists in rich nations (especially in the US?) tend to be media junkies, and many of us often feel we ought to respond to any book or event written up by the mass media. A bad habit, really. Aren't there far more important books and articles written by leftists deserving of more leftist readers than _Empire_?

At 9:50 PM -0600 1/8/03, Jeffrey Fisher wrote:
>in what ways have they actually been counterproductive?

A waste of time, first of all. I have already discussed why I think their theory is counterproductive, and so have others. My posts and theirs are in the LBO-talk and PEN-l archives, which are public, so I don't think I or anyone else needs to retype what we wrote. A number of more formal criticisms have already been published, Brennan's being just one of them. Enough attention to a pop cultural phenomenon, really. Time to move on. -- Yoshie

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