Marxism as Cultural Studies Re: Deleuze & Guattari....

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>Todd Archer wrote:
>
>>No, I was reacting primarily to Doug's offhand remark.  He seemed 
>>to be privileging pop culture products (and their study) over and 
>>above analysis of what's behind them ("forces of production").
>
>Heavens no. Me? I've spent the last 16 years writing about finance, 
>labor markets, capital flows, and all that other base-ish stuff. But 
>that doesn't mean that I think it's the only important thing around. 
>But anyone who wants to change the relations of production (as well 
>as what's produced) has to understand how and why people think and 
>feel the way they do. And to do that, things like the Simpsons are 
>important. A lot of hardass Marxists don't agree, dismissing it as 
>epiphenomenal fluff.
>
>As the Old Man said somewhere, when an ideology grips the mind of 
>the masses, it becomes a material force.
>
>Doug

I've never seen any "Marxist census," but in the United States at 
least, it is safe to say that Marxism has become cultural studies, in 
two senses: the majority of Marxist intellectuals are in either the 
humanities or qualitative branches of social sciences; and Marxism 
minus socialist revolution has become just another "discourse" which 
a number of non-Marxist intellectuals plunder and with which they can 
ornament their articles.

There aren't many Marxist intellectuals in basic and applied 
sciences.  It may be that a fair number of them exist and I just 
don't notice them, but I doubt it.
-- 
Yoshie

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