[lbo-talk] On the Limits of Rhetoric

Dennis Redmond dredmond at efn.org
Mon Nov 29 10:51:24 PST 2004


Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:


> A piece of writing (especially the sort that is useful to organizers
> on the left), like a piece of scientific research, may seem like a
> product of private and individual labor, but it is a fruit of social
> and collective labor.

Sure, texts are mediated by the collective relations of labor and forces of production. But the collectivity isn't necessarily a good thing in the total system; usually it's an agent of dire repression and violence. One of the key individual contributions of an artist, writer, scientist etc. consists precisely of breaking the baleful spell of the bad collectivity, and permitting a potential or utopian collectivity to speak, as it were.

-- DRR



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