[lbo-talk] McLemee's Derrida obit

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Mon Oct 11 10:36:58 PDT 2004


C. G. Estabrook wrote:


>I don't know if that's quite fair to (particularly later) Derrida, but it
>certainly captures wonderfully the pomo pall in US universities
>post-Vietnam.

There's more political activism - real world activism - coming out of humanities departments than there is out of social or natural sciences. Who's putting careerism behind political commitment? The economists?

In a typically stupid piece bashing postmodernism in the academy, Eric Alterman wrote several years ago:


>"But here's the twist. [Labor historian Nelson] Lichtenstein is part
>of a perfectly Rortyite reformist Campaign for a Living Wage at the
>University of Virginia. This campaign is not about ending sexism,
>racism, or homophobia, but about getting janitorial staff a few
>extra bucks an hour. Who are its volunteers? Primarily, says
>Lichtenstein, faculty and graduate students from the pomo literature
>and theory crowd."

Of course this undermined the point of Alterman's column, but that didn't stop him from writing it or his editors from publishing it.

Doug



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