[lbo-talk] Bizarre Comment from David Brooks

[Carrol Cox]

I don't know of a single conception (including my own) of the connection
of art and politics that I can accept. James Kincaid some decades ago
published an article in Critical Inquiry entitled "Cohrenet Readers;
Incohrent Texts." I would tentatively paraphrase that in the present
context as "Political Readers; Apolitical texts."  Such shows as the
Wire or any other novel, poem, paly, mime, standup comic, etc. provokees
critical thought only as the reader/viewer/listener brings critical
thought to his/her response to and understanding of the work. A reader
of Ch9omsky or of Marx (or pick you own favorite) will be poltically
influenced by that text only if in his/her own activity (s)he has
already begun to move in that dirction. 

What I got from Postone, for example, was what I considered a firmer &
more useful theoretical context for political thought and action but
otherwise he had no influence whatever on my political thinking. I came
to his book convinced that capitalism was an aberration in human
history; I found in his book an analysis of capitalism (or, more
accurately, a construal of Marx's analysis) that reinforced and gave
depth to that perspective. His students, in so far as I have read any of
their stuff, took from him and/or his texts the bizarred idea that "The
Left" had been a filure for the last century, and the even more bizarred
idea that one could derive from a theoretical analysis of capitalism a
theory of political action.

I know that many people, including a number on this list, explain their
political radicalization in terms of something they read. I simplyu
don't believe them. That ext that radicalized them did so only because
their activity had prepared them to be radicalized by it, not because
the text had an indepencent racizlizing potential.

The Wire never generated critical thought in a single person who was not
already beginning at least to think critically, said beginning rooted in
his/her history.

Carrol

Dennis Claxton wrote:
> 
> At 10:47 AM 4/6/2010, Carrol Cox wrote:
> 
> >This sort of glib implicit comparison between the present and the past
> >is really distorting.
> 
> It was a quote from a tv show Carrol.  A good tv show at that.  Such
> glibness could be a spark to critical thinking for some viewers.
> 
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk