Dear A.O. Staff,

The question that brought me to write my last letter between 12-4 a.m. after our last meeting was this: how do I, however you in your various responses have re-narrated and labeled my “position,” become radicalized to the point where I will be useful to creating the conditions necessary for proletariat revolution. What do I do? I share with the A.O. staff the goals of revolutionary socialism, am a new member of the International Socialist Organization, have been actively distributing “propaganda” for the Socialist Labor Party, have been a political activist fighting racism, sexism, and class oppression in extremely hostile environments (four years in New Orleans, Louisiana, for example where 40% of the people voted for an ex-KKK leader in the last governor’s race, and where the sodomy laws that allow for imprisonment of homosexuals are the most severe and oppressive in the country), will be presenting what I know are ideology critiques at three separate conferences this semester, am teaching revolutionary socialist texts in my classes, and I have entered the academy with at least one parent living just above the poverty level, with another having lived off unemployment for six months this year. Because of these areas of my experience I have devoted a tremendous amount of my time and energy to listening and attempting to participate in the discussions in this, the A.O. space. How is it that I, as a subject produced by the contradictions of capitalism interested in challenging capitalism can be effective here in this meeting ? What is to be done (with me, as a subject interpellated by the discourses of liberal pluralism, yet wishing to somehow fight these very discourses)? The point, in other words, to my letter was not to somehow enforce pluralism but to ask you to please explain to me what you mean more completely than your lexicon—or your articles even—have allowed. I cannot simply go to the library, or the future A.O. resource desk, or “take” the appropriate “classes,” or “engage” with members of the staff personally. Acquiring radical theory is not a private, individual thing. Debates over Marxism are not to be confined to the (bed)room, or the e-mail line, or to any private space, nor can radical pedagogy occur simply in private, professor or “mentor” guided discussions. This is why I support proposals for a permanent “Auto-Critique” section, for a “Pedagogy Section,” and for an A.O. study group that meets regularly (most importantly because it will allow dissenters to formally question those who have written or “voted in” articles in the A.O.).

Five of the responses I got to my last letter pointed out some very serious limitations to my position as I articulated it with respect to the issues I raised. I clearly have some thinking to do before I can seriously address these responses, seeing as though I (and also my position) have been labeled as racist, sexist, heterosexist, a democrat, ignorant, a pluralist, and it has been assumed that I have not even read the paper that I have committed so much of my time and energy to (“you might wish to actually read the last issue of the A.O.” Sahay, October 8, 1993). These critiques all have pedagogical value, in that they have forced me to reconsider and reconceptualize my position—which, I might say, is hardly complete or finalized. Without a knowledge, however, of just what position I have been working toward acquiring, what I have read, what “classes” I have taken or am taking, just what “position” I occupy, the critiques have (pre)supposed many things about what I wrote that are simply inaccurate (this is not even to address the inaccuracies that occurred in the re-narrating of what I actually wrote). Without even a rough curriculum vita, in other words, without any of my texts, and with only the scanty, impulsively produced, rough draft of a text I supplied, many of you have understood my letter in ways I am not willing to admit of my text or of my general position.

One response I am prepared to offer, however, regards the last paragraph of A.J. Sahay’s letter/proposal (October 8, 1993). It implies that in my letter I was asking for explanation of “why theory/why rigor/why decisiveness/why explanation/the status of necessity/historicity…” etc. She refers (presumably me) to Marx, Lenin, Althusser, Gramsci etc., all of whose books (except Lenin’s) dominate my bookshelves (and who I have been reading and reviewing as thoroughly as my resources have permitted me). The implication here is that the problematic I raised had something to do with those listed. I am not asking, as I made very clear in my letter, why we need these practices, but just what they mean in practice (does “theory” imply specific terms drawn from philosophy, economics, law? etc. Are other discourses somehow “non-theoretical”?). Despite her adeptness at pointing out the weaknesses and contradictions of the position she saw represented in my text, the question of what “rigor” means in practice and literal form stands unaddressed in her response. Furthermore, if she had read my text carefully, she would have seen that, in fact, I do not ask the question she answers in the second-to-last sentence of the letter section (i.e. “…Although it is true that if you… do the theoretical work necessary… you may still never “understand”… However, if you do not do this work… it is certain that you will never understand.”) Here is a question asked and answered—completely erasing the concepts I thought hard about before I used. My point was to question the very terms of this question, not to pose it, pretending to be ignorant of all the A.O. has published on the matter! The terms “theoretical work” and “understand” are the actions that the use of the majority A.O. lexicon implies. It is these concepts themselves that need explaining because they underpin any argument in “their” support. (It is not simply the argument in their support that needs explaining, which anybody who has read the A.O. would be familiar with.)

Sincerely,

Skip Thompson

October 16, 1993

p.s. In brief response to Rob Cymbala’s critique, I did not mean to imply that my “indoctrination” has taken place in my very useful conversations with people on the staff outside of this meeting space, but that the indoctrination is occurring within this meeting space itself. Conversations outside of this space are not periods of “indoctrination,” but are in fact necessary if the group is to avoid misunderstanding, inaccurate re-narrations of each of our positions, and the indoctrination tactics in this space that I tried to address.