M-L-M Mayhem!

Recently, after yet another re-read of Lenin's State and Revolution , I found myself thinking about that post-Marxist/post-Heideggerian concept of "sovereignty" received from Agamben (with some origin in Foucault) that has become doctrine for so many social theorists. Not that I haven't thought about this concept––or the way it has been linked to conceptions of biopolitics, governmentality, control, etc.––or bothered to think  this concept before. I have taught it when I have had to teach those thinkers that use it, I have criticized it, and often I have dismissed it altogether. It's just that––and bear with me here because this will be a loosely structured meditation/intervention rather than the rigorous essay it deserves and that I might write at a later date––I haven't directly thought "sovereignty" in relation to Lenin's theoretical work on the state. i Some background: I return to classics such as State and Revolution  quite frequently

One of the topics I keep returning to on this blog, since it has to do with my social circumstances, is the role of academics vis-a-vis the revolutionary movement. As one of my old posts makes clear (and includes back links to previous posts) I'm always caught between the problematic of the over-valorization of academic expertise amongst some leftists and the anti-intellectualism amongst others, both of which are erroneous positions. Although what I'm going to write in this post will probably repeat my thoughts from these older articles, the reason I keep returning to this topic is because it concerns my job and training and the way I cognize this part of my life in relation to the politics to which this life is dedicated. Mainly I want to focus on a question that I keep seeing raised, either online or directly to me, by other leftists embedded in academia, particularly those who come from proletarian backgrounds. "How is pursuing an academic career, or any form of acad

After attending Jasbir Puar's recent Toronto talk and book launch the other night I was struck again with the dilemma that post-  theory presents to Marxists, particularly Marxists like myself who occupy some sort of academic space. We all, to different degrees, represent the deep-seeded problem with what is often called "post-modern" philosophy/theory: its displacement of Marxism upon the sanctified pedestal of recognized radical theory, its idealist (and quite often obscurantist) bases that permit identity politics and movementism to proliferate as praxis, and (most damningly) the fact that the foundational authors of this tradition only achieved academic hegemony through a translation project funded by the CIA . I have diagnosed this problem in previous posts, and in Continuity & Rupture  I attempted to provide a general explanation for the rise of "post-modernism" by linking it to a Marxist retreat forced by the "end of history" narrative of c

Once in a while some truly terrible pieces of left anaylsis come along that confirm each other's intellectual vapidness: two articles that read as if they were written for each other by two frienemies on different sides of a poorly understood debate, justifying their respective analysis in their hermetically sealed echo chamber they believe is reality. When this happens the temptation is to believe in poetic fate or synchronicity: what a weird coincidence! This was my instinct when I read that self-important " We Are The Left " article around the same time that I read another eye-roll inducing Identity Politics is Shit article: they must have been written for each other, they both take the analysis of their opposite as the straw-person of their object of critique and in doing so become caricatures of themselves. First, the article by "We Are The Left" that is entitled, with the same self-importance, "An Open Letter on Identity Politics To and From the Le

Am I the only one who finds it strange that those who promote a culture of "calling out", a problematization of every cultural production as being "problematic" because it does not demonstrate x  political concern, and campaigns to "check the privilege" of others within the same left milieu, are the very same people who are by-and-large opposed to the history of actually existing socialism and the "totalitarianisms" of the Russian and Chinese Revolutions?  After all, if you're going to problematize the practice and ideas of people––that is, claim that they aren't politically up to par and demand that they rectify  their understanding of things––then, if your politics is ever operationalized, you can't just assume that things will be rectified spontaneously.  Indeed, you're demanding that people be forced to recognize that they are wrong, that their understanding of reality is oppressive; you're already, in some manner, forcing

Recently, I have been receiving annoying comments, some of which I didn't even bother moderating, on my Ten Theses On Identity Politics  post.  As usual, people who are annoyed that I have bothered to critique their political [lack of] practice would rather just insult me from a position of ignorance rather than take the time to think through my critiques.  What I find most interesting, and off-putting, is the claim that I am ignorant of the ideology adopted by third world anti-capitalist movements which, at least according to one angry commenter, is apparently influenced by identity politics!  Aside from the fact that these comments lack any significant argument, relying only on grand proclamations, is telling. Indeed, it made me realize that the ignorance these people attempt to ascribe to marxist movements––movements which are pursuing revolution in the global peripheries––is an ignorance they themselves possess, especially if they assume that marxism is just a tiny first world

There was a time when the charge of eclecticism  was considered an insult.  A theoretical approach that drew haphazardly from multiple frameworks, picking and choosing the concepts that seemed the most exciting, and yet failed to express a clear and thorough analysis was treated as inconsistent and muddled.  When the marxists of yesteryear branded a theoretical framework eclectic  they were claiming that it was spurious at best, revisionist at worst, and ultimately unscientific.  Eclecticism could not produce a concrete analysis of a concrete situation because it generally veered into a confused realm of speculation; eclectic theorists were more interested in theory-as-theory rather than a theory that possessed explanatory depth, let alone a theory capable of communicating the necessity of revolution. Now, decades after capitalism proclaimed itself triumphant, theoretical eclecticism has become somewhat normative.  If the charge of eclecticism  is even remembered as a charge, it

Bourgeois moralism continues to haunt the left even though some of us should know better.  Some of the predictably banal responses to Thatcher's death, for example, are proof of this haunting: that, in the midst of all the laudable celebration of a dead reactionary, you have the occasional "leftist" chiming in with some appeal to liberal humanistic platitudes ("celebrating the death of any human is wrong", or "we socialists should be more humane", or etc.) was annoying but predictable.  Thankfully, there are enough people who remember the violence of Thatcher's politics countering this pseudo-Gandhian ideology that, for once, this moralism was buried in an avalanche of anti-Thatcher articles and parties.  And so, because I don't feel the need to write what so many people have written already, I'm not going to bother posting an obituary about why there is nothing wrong with celebrating the death of a reactionary.  Rather, I think it is simpl