[lbo-talk] shag"Theory's Empire," an anti-"Theory"

shag shag at cleandraws.com
Mon Jun 2 06:16:27 PDT 2008


charles wrote:
>>
>>^^^^
>>CB:This was in part because this school of thought bought in to
>>anti-Sovietism and anti-communism, anti-Leninism.
>
>
> i'm confused. which school of thought?
>
>
> ^^^
> CB: The one where you had to tread lightly because they didn't like
> your being empirical and scientific in social science. I think you also
> said they were claiming all this anti-imperialism, anti-racism etc. They
> ignored that the _scientific_ socialists had been the leading
> anti-imperialist , anti-racist, etc. fighters , not perfect, of course,
> but doing more than anybody else.

oh. of course they ignored it. part of the deal is that they also argued science itself was imperialist, racist, sexist, etc. In other words, the antidote to ideologically driven science was not more science but questioning the claims about science being the answer at all. people would have guffawed if i'd countered with scientific socialism as the antidote. i don't have the book handy, but alison jaggar's _human nature and social theory_ has a good outline of the feminist critique of scientific socialism. dayum. i wish i wasn't in the midst of major household renovations or i'd dig it out and read it again. jaggar's an excellent socialist feminist and perhaps you can appreciate her criticisms of scientific socialism. her goal isn't to eviserate it but to criticize it and move it forward -- if that makes sense.

btw, the "school of thought" in this instance was any one particular school but a confluence of ideas in feminist theory, anthropology, cultural studies, sociology, philosophy, etc. etc. and even then it was a strand of thought _within_ feminist, with cultural studies, within sociology, etc. etc.

-- http://cleandraws.com Wear Clean Draws ('coz there's 5 million ways to kill a CEO)



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