From owner-marxism-international  Wed Apr  9 20:08:10 1997
Date: Wed, 9 Apr 1997 20:07:49 -0400 (EDT)
From: Stephen C Tumino <sctumino@acsu.buffalo.edu>
Subject: M-I: PANIC LEFT-6
Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.3.95.970409175842.22250A-100000@conciliator.acsu.buffalo.edu>





Revolutionary Marxist Collective/SUNY Buffalo



************
PANIC LEFT-6
************


In the small petty bourgeois universe of Doug Henwood to place in the
public space a text for public critique and discussion "takes nerve". It
is, in short an act of "personal" courage. This is only one of the
symptoms of cyberfascism that we have pointed out: it is a cult of
personality and secrecy and a buddy system that has made any exchange of
ideas and views other than the ones that support the net left clique
almost impossible.  We are Revolutionary Marxists: we believe not in buddy
systems or the pedagogy of support (Holstun)  but in open discussion.  We
have spent most of our time at Buffalo struggling for such a space.  Why
do you think James Holstun and his clique are so hostile to us?  Recall
that like the clique-ish leftist Henwood, Prof. Holstun also tells us that
speaking out in this fascist climate is all about "nerve" and "guts". 
In his response to us he doubts if we even have the "guts to write back at
all".  Henwood and Holstun--net-left and academic left--deploy the
identical strong-arm techniques against any attempts to open up discussion
and break up their personality cults of secrecy and buddy networks. 
	Where do you think the unrelenting VIOLENCE in Prof. Holstun's
text orginates?  Here is a "teacher" who presents himself as the essence
of the pedagogy of support and yet his own text is nothing but naked
violence.  Holstun is relying on this violence (supported by his
institutional power) to silence oppositional students.  He himself
declares that to critique and engage with campus groups is hopelessly
idealist and localist: why then he is he sending his "gossip column" to
us?  His gossip column--a collection of clique-ish rumours and personal
attacks ("stoop-id") unleashes the VIOLENCE of the bourgeois academic left
against critique-al and revolutionary Marxist knowledges.  That is why. 
The reason Henwood and Sprouse (and undoubtedly many many others) find his
text interesting is not simply because it echoes their politics back to
them.  It is interesting above all because the violence in his text acts
as a proxy violence for all who are unable to engage our RED CRITIQUE,
those who have either used diversionary detours (style) or simply outright
ignored the issues we have raised. 


Sprouse says he is a student of literature: he, then should know that the
very form of our text which is an intertextual (oops big words again)
reply to Holstun (remember the petty bourgeois poetics of Wallace Stevens
and his "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"?).  There is nothing in
Holstun (except perhaps his more violent violence) that has not already
been said about our text and has not already been responded to in our
PANIC LEFT series:  Holstun repeats Leo Casey's comments about Laclau and
Mouffe, repeats Proyect's defense of Meiksins Wood against pomo, dismisses
us as "cult studies" like Proyect, laughs the nervous laughter of Scott
McLemee, wonders what we are actually "doing" for workers in Buffalo like
Malecki, repeats the fascist clique-ism of Henwood.... This is the
melancholic story of the net/acadmic left that is recirculated over and
over again and signed over and over again by Henwood, Sprouse, Proyect ,
Cox, and now Holstun (HAVE YOU READ IT?)...this is not our "story"... 
 

Sprouse himself says he has never seen the entire net left so united
against anything as they are now against us. Do you know WHY?  WE are , as
one of the posts on this list said: from the wrong side of the tracks.  We
are the "other" of the reformist left.  We remind all of you what you
could have done and the way you compromise and are compromising with the
right wing.  We are showing you the way you are all wrapped up in your
petty professional concerns (Sprouse says his exams are more important to
him than participation in public debate, and while attacking the academy
is getting ready a job there ... the stylistic commentary of Holstun, the
English professor...the dissertation wars of Proyect, Henwood and the
net-left...). RED CRITIQUE puts all of you--the petty professionalists--on
the spot and now you are all united in a communal ritual of, as Ralph
Dumain says:  expelling the "immigrant."  We are the RED immigrant on this
list and all of your efforts have been focused on finding "legal" ways to
il-legalize us ........this is the core of the comprador left..... 











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