2. Three Letters to the Alternative Orange Staff

It is significant—and more importantly symptomatic of the cynical and post-political sensibilities imposed through the requirements of the post-Cold War/New World Order—that the invitation extended by the Alternative Orange staff to the faculty, staff and students of Syracuse University has yielded, up until now, only one printable and sustained response (Mas'ud Zavarzadeh's “Break the Silence” in Vol. 3 No. 2, p. 10-19). We recognize that the (non)response on the part of students/faculty/staff, while extremely lamentable is also exceedingly necessary. It is, in other words, a very clear and certain response, one which knowingly embraces the various requirements brought to bear by the newly consummated North Atlantic capitalist trading-bloc (NAFTA). This international faction has violently recalled the political advances made by feminist and post-colonialist theorists in the seventies to mid-eighties. Without the burden of these (political) concessions—which have been effectively eradicated behind the conservativist discourses of “P.C."—this bloc is able to devote more time and resources to the production of those consciousness-skills necessary to counter and compete with the hegemony of the global market headed up by brethren multi-nationals located in Japan and Germany.

However, despite these (non)responses, the Alternative Orange staff has recently recieved [sic.] three letters from students which has prompted this particular “Letters to the Editor” section:

1. letter signed “Shaun Huston” a Graduate Student in Geography

2. letter signed “Freddy Endorf" a resident of Brewster, a Syracuse University student dormitory

3. essay entitled “INTELLECTUAL PRODUCTION STRUGGLE” signed “Professor Moriarty Skreach”

Skreach's text, a post-al performance piece, recalls the high-tech deconstructive writing currently embraced by the post-industrial petty bourgeoisie intelligentsia of the West in texts such as Avital Ronell's The Telephone Book, Jacques Lacan's Television, and Gregory Ulmers' Teletheory: Grammatology in the Age of Video (see Mas'ud Zavarzadeh's “Pun(k)deconstruction and the Postmodern Political Imaginary” in Cultural Critique. Fall 1992,5-46). This particular letter, which is signed “Professor Moriarty Skreach"—invokes this fictional arche-enemy of Sherlock Holmes as a subtle reminder of the “pun-flu” opposition now facing those that defend the possibility of exhaustive scientific knowledges (and thereby, “concepts") and that as well, insist on the political necessity of the certain closure of the slippages of “conversation” with political “conclusions." By invoking the figure of Professor Moriarty, a rejoinder aimed at re-skepticalizing and policing all theoretical claims to the “outside” of (fictional) textuality—such as the “outsides” advanced by Marxist theory including but not restricted to “class struggle”, “history” and “social totality"—Skreach's letter rehearses the institutional embeddedness and functionality of ludic discourses and theories of knowledge. Written in a performative, post-representational mode, the text performs its (non)knowing, while at the same moment, knowing full and well that these antitheoretical ludic sensibilities are so embedded in the reigning common-sense that no “argument” is necessary to combat the opposition.

The text models its policing on the deconstructive tactics that the academic agents of the North Atlantic middle-class have, at this historical moment, found extremely effective in silently maintaining bourgeois institutional hegemony against the encroachments of Marxist cultural studies. Skreach writes with ludic playfulness in order to turn these offensive and damaging Marxist “concepts” into “puncepts”:

It is not merely limited, such, rather it points to, this “space” of maintaining the division of theory in the work place. But individually it relates to a difficult praxical subject. The answer of course is in the petty-bourgeoisie—to the intrinisically [sic.] pragmatic subject who theorizes politics and class production. That is, in relations to the practical realm of “politicized theory." Multinational bourgeoisie and the mediation of possibility tenure publication [Sic].

By rehearsing Gregory Ulmer's deconstructive deployment of the “puncept"—the textual sign of displacement of the possibility of “concept” (Zavarzadeh, 38-43) as well as Derrida's canonic (dis)claimer that “there-is-no-outside-the-text”--these antitheorist theorists, similar to Skreach, construct an unspoken offensive against the very possibility of reliable knowledges of any “outside”; specifically, the knowledges of the social totality required for the advancement of the historical materialist project.

Skreach's response to the Alternative Orange staff is formatted analagously to the ludic text deployed by Syracuse University English Department Chair “John W. Crowley"', in his institutional policing of Professors Donald Morton and Mas'ud Zavarzadeh. Skreach pun-fully ends his letter by citing it as an excerpt from “Dismissed Irresponsible Democratic Procedures... 1984, (Deep Press)"; see the Alternative Orange Vol.3 No.2, p.12 for the same tactic in Crowley's text which we have reprinted; Crowley, in his ludic “reprimand” of Morton and Zavarzadeh cites “Papers on Oppression: A Practical Guide (John Birch Press)".

Behind this mystifying logic, the post-al publishing industry is effectively “opened-up” for all subjects, for all agendas and for all classes. After all, as Skreach and Crowley subtlely demonstrate in their respective letters—and contra to their texts' calls for the elusive “specificity” of the (textual) “alea” they merely repeat one another (!)—there is no “reality” (no oppression, no exclusion of critique-al knowledges) “behind” their texts; even their publishing houses are rendered as pun-ful figures and uncapturable referents. Skreach and Crowley, in their desperate attempts at conveying their familiarity with a post-modern, post-representational politics-of-convenience, playfully chime in historical unison: the very possibility of political “exclusion” has been “excluded"!

However, not only has this same regime of ludic theorists acquired the run of the dominant academic presses—Routledge, University of Minnesota Press, Indiana University Press—but it has also opportunistically (with great success and reward) proceeded to canonize its own (anti)canonic proclamations! It has re-canonized and recommodified its criticisms of the possibility of any dominant “center"—and the underwriting of the "center” by the “margins” (see the arche-writings of the post-al canon—the texts of Derrida, Foucault, Lyotard, Butler, Wittig, Lacan, Mercer, Rubin, Baudrillard, Godzich, Scholes, Kristeva, Barthes—in the celebrated and exhaustive The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader. Ed., H. Abelove, M.A. Barale, D. Halperin. New York: Routledge, 1993; On Signs, Ed. M. Blonsky. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1991; Postmodernism: A Reader, Ed. P. Waugh. London: Edward Arnold, 1993).

Again these tropological tactics that post-ality and post Sausurrean lingusitics have brought to bear, make great attempts to render their own effectivity as if it were “foreign” to and thereby, unexplainable by the outmoded and out-dated knowledges of historical materialism. However, in The Poverty of Philosophy, (New York: International Publishers, 1993), Marx critiques the economic theories of Proudhon, in which, similar to the “contemporary”, and “avant-garde” writings of Gayatri Spivak, Homi Bhabha and other leading neo- and post-Marxists, Proudhon attacks the materialist notion of history with his own oppositional notion of the ludic “puncept” (in 1846!): “The value of labor is a figurative expression, an anticipation of cause for the effect... Labor like liberty... is a thing vague and indeterminate by nature” (quoted by Marx in The Poverty of Philosophy, 42).

Marx, who saw fit to devote this entire work to a response to the mystifications of this highly influential German philosopher responds:

In labor as a commodity, which is a grim reality, [Proudhon) sees nothing but a grammatical ellipsis. Thus the whole of existing society, founded on labour as a commodity, is henceforth founded on a poetic license, a figurative expression. If society wants to “eliminate all the drawbacks” that assail it, well, let it eliminate all the ill-sounding terms, change the language [these remain the aims of contemporary ludic struggles over the terms “Afro American” and “African-American”; “Mrs." and “Ms."; “gender” and “sexuality”; “sexuality” and “queerness”; etc.]; and to this end it has only to apply to the Academy for a new edition of its dictionary. After all that we have just seen, it is easy for us to understand why M. Proudhon, in a work on political economy, has to enter upon long dissertations of etymology and other parts of grammar. Thus he is still learnedly discussing the antiquated derivation of servus [A servant, slave] from servare [To preserve]. These philological dissertations have a deep meaning [we recall the “Deep Press” of Skreach as well as the analagous [sic.] “deep structures” of the Kristevean theory of linguistics in Revolution in Poetic Language; the aim of this “deep meaning” is to provide as Marx continues], an esoteric meaning—they form an essential part of M. Proudhon's argument (44).

The second letter addressed to the Alternative Orange Staff is signed “Freddy Endorf', who contra Skreach, provides more serious and sustained conceptual arguments and criticisms of and for the A. 0. For Endorf, the A. 0. is “commend[able] [for] providing a space for commentary other than the mostly mindless drivel in the Daily Orange." The Daily Orange is the functionary, award-winning student publication of Syracuse University, which, it should be recalled, the A.0. has neither pronounced “elitist” or “mindless”, in the moralizing fashion that Endorf's text promotes. We have however, explained and theorized the political effects of such “mindlessness” and “elitistness” as a means of enabling students to overthrow the very need for such publications, publications which are only necessary in lieu of the prevailing class antagonisms. Our staffs' most recent polemics with this award-winning ideological tour-de-force-appear in the A.O. Vol. 2 No. 2, p.2-3. Its “awards”, as is evident from this encounter, are nothing less than a result of the Daily Orange's successful rehearsal of the prevailing codes of liberal pluralist, anti-interventionist journalism.

It is significant that, despite formal protestations to the contrary, the (award-winning) position that Endorf's text takes up is one that dominant publications such as the Daily Orange have spent years defending as another of the singular “obviousnesses” of common-sensical journalistic practices! Endorf argues:

Although I am not particularly knowledgeable about Marxist ideals, I do know that Marx tried to reach the common person, or proletariat. I feel that by the use of cryptic vocabulary in your articles, you run the risk of alienating much of your potential audience. Even as an ambitious and interested reader, I feel sometimes as though I am wading through too much invented jargon to uncover the ideas expressed in some of your articles...While constantly deriding the elitist capitalists, you too set yourselves apart by using such strange methods of communication... I would appreciate a response from you detailing your reasoning behind this style of writing. Preferably, you would use colloquial English to appease my simple mind.

It seems evident, on first reading, that a more “honest”, “open”, “unmediated” or “reasonable” series of disclosures could hardly be expected. Endorf's antitheoretical, antideconstructive and more “down-to-earth” and personable low-tech modality of writing presents itself as immediately available and familiar to all—so familiar, in fact, that it could only seem an outright act of “violence” to submit his inquiries (and his mode of inquiry) to critique. Writings and questionings such as these, after all, claim to draw their authority from the knowledges derived from the plentitudes of experience (to which presumeably [sic.] all have access); therefore, they are without recourse to the advanced abstractions and mediations required by “theory” (to which, as Endorf recalls, only an elite few academics have access).

Contra to the cynical post-al tone of Skreach, then, Endorf's letter appears on the scene of the “Letters” section on “its own terms” (and no others); that is, the rhetoric of its mode of inquiry announces that it advances no political agendas but has merely laid bare its own experience (of ignorance) in the pursuit of"simple truth[s]." Its writing announces—prior to any readings—that it is not interested in polemics; it is interested in “conversation." Endorf demonstrates, in short, that to engage with this text theoretically is already to “violate” it.

One recalls then, the protocols of response foregrounded in Derrida's letter to Gerald Graff. There is here, as part of the deftly constructed anti-theoretical “experience” to which Endorf's letter lays claim and sole rights, a similar privileging of a Derridean “ethic of discussion," an “ethic” which silently reproduces the textual semblance of a “friendly contract between us," a contract that renders both respondents as “equals”; that is, each with equal and sole access to the inviolable singularity of their own experience. It is, again—according to the theoretical protocols that speak as the “unsaid” of this particular letter—made to seem in the A. 0. 's interests not to respond, not to “conclude” and to therefore not engage with the presuppositions put forth here.

The “Letters to the Editor” section, as we noted in the first section of this response, is one of the most highly cherished forums of (post)modern bourgeois democracy. It is a space, as Endorf's arguments struggle to reproduce, founded on the need for the resolution of issues in a democratic and ethical manner; one is expected, through these protocols of experience, to accomplish these tasks solely through “conversation” and not through exclusionary critique and “conclusions." These points are significant, since this text cannot be abstracted from the forum in which it arises; to do so would be to address Endorf's text without fully investigating the terms of engagement in their entirety (the basis of the “experience”, the “honesty” and the “reason” that uphold and bind Endorf's antitheoretical frame of intelligibility). What are the conditions that allow texts such as these to bring these particular “unsaids” to bear both prior to and through their very writing (as if the simple and formal rehearsal of “clarity” was a commendable end in itself, without regard to the contents of the politics and the aims of the argument?).

It is evident as the narrative of this letter unfolds, that the cherished “contract” that Endorf is forwarding draws on a prevalent humanistic and populist “clarity." Our critique of various aspects of this “clarity"—a fixed and transcendental correspondence between language and its referents—will answer the class-initiated questions that have submitted Endorf's own mode of intelligibility to the decisive pressures of history (for one, how does “clarity” stand up to the historical pressures introduced by its material and practical “other” of “illiteracy"?).

Endorf's text, which is a more low-tech version of Skreach's postal (post representational) invections against theory and the intransigence of conceptuality goes to great lengths to reestablish unintelligibility as a purely subjective category (an effect of “simple minds” against “complex” and “deep thinkers"). As both Endorf and those charged with providing the organizational knowledges for the post-al managerial force ask themselves—how does one reach the “simple mind[s]" of the proletariat?

Suffice to say, that Endorf's protestations that the Alternative Orange remain accessible for workers is underwritten by the very “silences” that render these distinctions as “givens” in the first place. These class distinctions according to Endorf's text—its embededdness in its class interestedness and its institutionality—are legitimately ordered around the headings of the “ambitious” and the “common." The “ambitious” and the “common” as Endorf's argument runs are not the effects and sites of class struggle; they are, on the contrary, the unquestionable and foundational categories which determine class and with which one is able to know with unconditional certainty ones' appropriate class.

Abstracting from its own historicity this argument demands that access to educational facilities be provided for “ambitious and interested reader[s]' [e.g., the entrepreneurs required for the reproduction of the free-market and that ostensibly “make their own way” without the support or exploitation of others] and exclude the “common [wo]man” (e.g., those subjects enmired in their own “commonness” that are unthinkable without collectivity and with out a notion of"class"]. According to this logic that Endorf's rehearses, the university and the various institutions of bourgeois culture are legitimately organized around the world-historical distinctions between the “ambitious” and the “common”: the “common” are required to labor and excluded from higher education, on the basis they are “common” while the “ambitious” are subtlely enabled to reap the benefits of this labor because they are inherently “ambitious." It is, as Endorf's argument continues, the persistent and “ambitious” subject that accedes to the higher levels of academia—as apparently he has—and that is thereby enabled to go on and produce the “meaningfulness” of history (through texts such as these).

"Ambition” and “common[ness]" then are, for low-tech bourgeois thinkers such as Endorf, the trans-historical and logocentric values that preorganize and therefore, legitimate, all social organizations along lines of class, gender, sexuality and race. It is no coincidence that Endorf, similar to other populist thinkers, as a result of their class interests, are required to bear the burdensome contradiction between “ambition” and “simpl[icity]": it is symptomatic that Endorf's low-tech sensibilities, in excluding the “common” (collectivity) readily embrace the “simple." The “simple” is the outcome of the dominant experience—it requires no explanation—the “common” on the other hand—which Endorf clearly sets his own more sophisticated and “ambitious” reading skills apart from—is the outcome of banality and the incapability of risk-taking characteristic of the proletariat.

Endorf's “ambition”, as he notes, is the aspect of his own subjectivity that clearly sets him over and apart from the “common." Both subjects—common! workers and ambitious/capitalists—as Endorf renarrates, encounter “jargon” (the unintelligible) in the course of daily practice. However, while, in Endorf's letter, the “common” subject walks away “alienat[ed]"—that is, retreats back into the “common” and “alienated” realm of collectivity, the “ambitious” subject interrogates such “jargon” with the aim of innovating the “cryptic” and the “outdated." As Endorf writes of the A. 0. further on his letter, “there is no need to overwrite in order to appear as though you are all geniuses." The genius is, after all the singularly “ambitious” of the “ambitious” in bourgeois thought—there is no more singular and “freer” subject.

However, as Lenin has written against such mystifications, what is necessary is not the production of socialist geniuses, but rather the eradication of the very distinction between “intellectuals” and “workers”:

[the workers do not] take part as workers, but as Socialist theoreticians... in other words, they take part only to the extent that they are able, more or less, to acquire the knowledge of their age and advance that knowledge.... [Therefore, as Lenin continues] efforts must be made to raise the level of the consciousness of the workers generally; care must be taken that the workers do not confine themselves to the artificially restricted limits of literature for workers but that they study general literature to an increasing degree (What is To Be Done? New York: International Publishers, 1929, 41).

These notions are crucial as well in making sense of the third letter to the A.0. staff which is signed, “Shaun Huston”