> thoughts inspired by my continued take down of The Walter Benn Michaels
> Experience:
The following is _not_ a direct response to this passage (r the post as a whole) but rather thoughts triggered by it but not responsive to it.
Best practice, I think, in analyzing liberal or other anti-socialist texts is to assume good faith on the part of the writer, and develop the critique not as a demonstration of what is wrong with the writer but rather as an exploration of the social source(s) of the viewpoints under examination. Those sources are of much more political significance than the motives or character defects of the writer. There is also, though this is a lesser concern, a rhetorical advantage, namely that a focus on the individual, I think _always_, in fact generates nearly endless digressions and irrelevancies in any discussion which follows.
The Michaels thread was poisoned from the beginning by the fact it originated in the posts of Chuck and Joanna, both posts focusing on Michaels and whether or not he was a nice man or not. This apolitical, even anti-polotca; begommomg continued to distort discussion up to the present. And the proliferation of epthets (asshole, etc) in subsequent posts made certain that the discussion would nenver quite find the centralissues involved, or at least never come to focus on them fruitfully. The whole discussion was poisoned by the question of Michaels rather than the question of the natture of calss struggle. (It is incorrect to speak of the relation of this or that to class struggle, since this mode of reference reifies all the 'entities' being discussed.) The question of Michaels's readers might have been far more fruitfully explored, I think, had the total thread been less distorted by quibbles over his character, and that discussion, instead of being the cul de sac it was might have led into more detailed and less fragmented discussion of a number of important political issues.
Michaels, incidentally, is a 'follower' of Richard Rorty, and his article (with a co-author) long ago in Critical Inquiry, "Against Theory," was specifically a development from Rorty's pragmatism. Hence the discussion should probably have touched on this pragmatist tendency and its relationship to other political trends. Again, the character of Michaels would have been entirely irrrelevant to such a discussion.
Focus on individuals fucks up political discussion, almost always.
Criticism of Bush during his administrationa lmost always led away from the political issues. Criticism of Obama now is having the same effect. The key fact about Bush, which dwarfed all his personal characteristics, was that he was President of the Uniitged States. The key fact about Obama, which dwarfs all his personal characteristics, is that he is President of the United States. The expression "POTUS" seems ugly to me personally, ugly or not, it does seem to be useful to refer to the temporary resident of the White House with that term rather than as President Bush or President Obama. The issues of real political importance do not change with the change of that resident.