[lbo-talk] Prose Style, was Time to Get Religion

[Sean Andrews]

He has flashes of inspired thought and, particularly in the 1970s, was
trying to work through what seemed to be very dynamic changes that
only in retrospect seem understandable.  His mirror of production and
system of objects not to mention political economy of the sign are all
very good attempts to deal, in real time, with what people now refer
to as postmodernism or even postfordism (the latter because
Baudrillard is one of the only cultural critics mentioned  by name in
Aglietta's germinal text on Regulationist economics.  For him,
Baudrillard was looking at something important at that moment in the
way that the system was working in terms of producing demand and a
social consumption norm which was slowly being shorn away from
identity basd more on social location relative to production.)

I actually think the biggest problem with Baudrillard (though it
applies to most of the key theorists of the last 30 or so years,
Butler included) is that the people who use them or their theories
often haven't really read them but are getting third or fourth hand
understandings which, while they might sort of make sense when
compared to the original, aren't really borne out by the entire
argument in the oiginal text.  On this account, I am a bit of a
traditionalist.  I think that there is an original author and text--at
least in a technical sense that there is a text one should read in
order to come up with the resistant or alternative readings: when one
comes up with alternative readings and reappropriates concepts without
actually having read them, that's a different process than the
poststructuralist indeterminacy of meaning.  It's just lazy.

On 12/7/06, B. <docile_body at yahoo.com> wrote:
> How do you feel about Jean Baudrillard?
>
> Circumlocution, or no, or neither?
>
>
> -B.
>
>
>
> Doug Henwood wrote:
> >
> > On Dec 7, 2006, at 11:14 AM, Tayssir John Gabbour
> quoted Slavoj Zizek:
> >
> >> I'm a total Enlightment person. I believe in clear
> >> statements and so on.
> >
> > And remember, when he writes in English, he's not
> writing in his native language.
>
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