[lbo-talk] we sooo won the culture wars

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Fri Mar 10 13:46:19 PST 2006


Carrol Cox wrote:


>A footnote that may be trivial but may be important. The point of
>departure for treating the "culture wars" as s distraction is calling
>them "culture wars" -- i.e., in effect identifying "culture" as a
>distinct realm of human activity. This is related to my parenthetical
>objection to your declaring your desire that this list bridge the / in
>"culture/econ," my point being that as soon as you recognize them as two
>different things you have confirmed the /, and no efforts to bridge it
>will succeed. You have to start with a unity and divide,not start with
>fragments and try to combine.

You've got a point, but it's not me who put the virgule there - it's near-universal in American political discourse. (Hofstadter footnote: it's in his early-1960s essay on pseudo-conservative revolt; he criticizes those who think of "cultural politics" [his phrase] as a distraction from the real business of material interests.) I think the distinction is largely bogus, but I'm in a minority.

The last point is pretty weird for someone I think of as a Marxist. Sometimes the point is to trace connections between things that appear to be unrelated - whether it's the fetishized commodity or the M-M' circuit that appears to expand without any relation to production.

Doug



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