Tumino —•— M-I: PANIC LEFTIST - FRAME EIGHTEEN

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  TEXT VERSION: M-I

  TEXT VERSION: M-TH

See also: M-TH: PANIC LEFTIST - FRAME EIGHTEEN   (post by Gerald Levy)

See also: Re: M-I: PANIC LEFTIST - FRAME EIGHTEEN   (post by Robert Malecki)

From owner-marxism-international
Date: Tue, 22 Apr 1997 14:50:03 -0400 (EDT)
From: <sctumino@acsu.buffalo.edu>
Subject: M-I: PANIC LEFTIST - FRAME EIGHTEEN

Revolutionary Marxist Collective (Buffalo)
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PANIC LEFTIST - FRAME EIGHTEEN

ONE

Gerald Levy, who at first seemed to be seriously interested in a re-theorization of “question” and its relation to power and the matter of “fascism”, has now trivialized the entire issue by resorting to the strategies of tabloid journalism. A strategy that has made (as he had calculated) his trivilization of our theoretical task a rallying point (as if more was needed) around which the retrograde elements on the net-left can re-consolidate its attempt to drive us off the list.

TWO

It is telling that simultaneously we have received a “warning” from the “Moderator” who says either we stop using the concept of “fascism” or we are out! Somehow to use “fascism” is an act of violence but the relentless attack by the deployment of all forms of racist, sexist and xenophobic remarks on us are simply harmless “jokes”. The moderator is fairly indifferent to the number of times, the contexts,... of the use of for example, “Stalinism”. It does not seem to matter who gets called “Stalinist” and in what context and what theoretico-political assumptions lie behind it... Violence is what the “other” does on the net-left: the “one” is always joking, the “other” is humorless, the “one” is “witty”.... The idea that the theorization of “fascism” will get us kicked off the list is preposterous: we are going to get kicked off for some reason pretty soon... we will continue our efforts to theorize and mark the fascist practices on this list by the concept of “fascism”.... Those who quote text book definitions to us, should “read” not the books but the existing practices... including those on the net-left.... In the move to get us kicked off the list, Doug Henwood, who is busy building a “good society” out of beautiful sentences, is, as usual, fulfilling his historical role of “leadership” and guiding this re-UNITED front to its “destination” (oops, he does not believe in “arche” or “telos” but....)

THREE

Still, we would like to try — one more time — to engage Levy in a non-trivial discussion. The point that we have made (and he refuses to “read") is that questions are PRODUCED historically and in the process of an extended CRITIQUE of existing practices. This is another way of saying: QUESTIONS are not P E R S O N A L: they are acts of collective inquires (historical critique of “normal science” to use Kuhn's wording). When this historicity and collectivity is denied (i.e. when questions are no longer attempts to mark the material limits of practices to inscribe the “un-said” back to the “said” and thus transform the practices in “question"), questions become ARBITRARY — i.e. they become PERSONAL assertions of power masquerading as desire for KNOWLEDGE.

What works against the theory of question that we are developing is the prevailing bourgeois theory of knowing that valorizes questions as acts of VISION, PERSONAL INITIATIVES, INDIVIDUAL CURIOSITY... (all highly valued personality/personal traits in entrepreneurial capitalism). Our historicising of “questions” is related to a point that Marx makes when he writes, “Therefore mankind always sets itself only such tasks as it can solve; looking at the matter more closely, it will always be found that the task itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution already exist or are at least in the process of formation”. Marx's own “questions” for Hegel (on the matter of “state” for example) are not ARBITRARY: they come from an extended historical critique (in his HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF RIGHT and other texts).

To usurp the historical critique and turn “question” into an instance of PERSONAL POWER ("answer me") is an instance of appropriating power by transferring HISTORY into a PERSONAL matter and putting in place of a materialist analysis a “cultural”, “political” or “cognitive” solution. Fascism is the insertion of the cultural solutions ("family values” in the current Republican discourse, for example, anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany, Le Pen's anti-immigrant program in France...) for material contradictions (labor practices...). Hugh Rodwell's “questions” tabulated in his post, are an extension and substitution for his tropes: Buffalo “scrotum”, bowel movement, ejaculations... They are acts of intimidation, silencing, exclusion “represented” as questions posed by a “knowing” subject. These questions, in short, were a case of a PERSONAL exercise of control....

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