[lbo-talk] sopranos as thatcherite ideology

[shag carpet bomb]

Someone who reads my blog sent me a link to another blog he reads, The 
Valve. On that blog, someone wrote something enlightening about Michaels 
approach to literary criticism. I'd complained in a comment at the blog 
about litcritters who try to do social theory. I've never quite grasped 
what it is they're up to, though I got an inkling once when I read French 
Theory. Anyway, Aaron Bady, a lit prof, wrote about Michaels' essay, Going 
Boom, http://www.bookforum.com/inprint/015_05/3274.

In that essay Michaels maintains that memoirs and shows like the Sopranos 
are texts that depoliticize social life, reducing everything to the family, 
emblematic of a Thatcherite ideology where there is no such thing as 
society -- only men, women, and their families.[1]

Bady's response:

"To understand what a memoir is, his argument implies, all you have to know 
is what its purpose is in present day society, what its function is. And 
since he can presume that the entire genre has a single function, he can 
categorically dismiss its entirety en-masse: what matters is not what is 
actually written in the memoirs themselves, but the principles of selection 
used by the nefarious agents of capitalism who bring you Oprah's Book Club 
and the 
<http://www.blographia-literaria.com/2009/04/reader-of-talent.html>talent-less, 
passive readers who apparently ingest them."

So, this could be a way to answer one of Miles' questions about the "social 
sources". If you've been following my criticisms of Michaels' book, you can 
see why it is that Michaels does what he does. He's extending his approach 
to lit crit into the realm of political and social analysis. Thus, to 
borrow the blog authors words, this is what Michaels does in his political 
analysis:

You don't have to understand what leftists engaged in identity politics are 
actually writing and doing, all you have to know is what their purpose is 
in present day society. You only have to know what the function of leftist 
identity politics is. Thus, what matters is not what they actually say and 
do, but how they function for neo-liberalism.

This is his theory of how the world works. This is his theory about how 
leftist anti-oppression struggles work. Apparently, the lit critters call 
this neo-functionalism. I don't know from Adam about it in that field, but 
I do know functionalism in social theory and it sounds about right to me.

If you want to understand why the Apollonian style, I guess that's as good 
as any and it doesn't veer off into ad hominem pseudo-sociology.

For the litcritters who are around, is Bady on the money?

shag

[1] i find it astonishing to learn that family isn't political but be that 
as it may ...