kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
Continental philosophy on the telly and in the op-ed columns. Hmmm. Probably at a higher level of intermalectual discourse than in the UK media, but that just means the same bullshit in poncier language 
Critical Theory and Social Movements today
- Thread starter articul8
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butchersapron
Bring back hanging
That's an example of what i'm talking about though - here's the thinking bit and here's the thinkers to do it.
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
I smiled when I saw the thread title and did think 'BA's going to be on this one'
Completely agree with you on this one tho. Probably a great discussion, but where's the relevance? Are they saying that the modern w/c should be aspiring to be poets and artists instead of consumers? Probably not.
Completely agree with you on this one tho. Probably a great discussion, but where's the relevance? Are they saying that the modern w/c should be aspiring to be poets and artists instead of consumers? Probably not.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
If there's ever a country where the separation between mental and manual labour has been deified it's bloody france. (Sorry for messing the thread up A8 
)
)
articul8
Dishonest sociopath
a danger, admittedly - but I don't see how refusing to engage with "thinkers" helps thinking
articul8
Dishonest sociopath
How do you know it's irrelevant if you refuse to engage with it? That's just crass anti-intellectualism
Ideas can also be relevant on different levels - this is what BA doesn't want to accept - "if it's not of immediate use to joe or josephine prole it's not worth bothering yourself about". You can't just dissolve or suspend the historical division between mental and material labour like that.
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
The problem comes because the 'thinkers' rarely, if ever, have to see their thinking applied to real-world situations or indeed deal with 'real world' people. The obvious question as well is how are the thinkers being engaged? Is it at a level where by they are part of any discussion, or where they lead and others follow? The debates had with gorski would seem to be instructive about where European philosophers would place themselves - as a 'lead' (altho they'd argue against being a vanguard, merely 'facilitators' or something like that) rather than a 'part'.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
You've totally missed what i'm talking about and rendered it into some crass anti-intellectualism, when i'm arguing the opposite. That 'thinking' takes place all the time and is ill-served by this separation into thinkers and doers - and that the title of this though-fest reflects the acceptance of this seperation by big-name-thinkers.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
a danger, admittedly - but I don't see how refusing to engage with "thinkers" helps thinking
You're confused?
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
I'm not refusing to engage in it - it does seem like a genuinely interesting discussion (even if I can't work out who is saying in post#11!, and have no idea with 'K' is!).
Funnily enough it's an issue I'm interested in - more in UK history then French - about how the proletariat, in worse conditions than today, self-educated etc, and why it doesn't happen now (or at least not as often - the self-educators were among the birth party for the labour movement, where are they now?), so I can see the relevance here...
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Their skills were firstly recuperated by the state via the labour movement, classic examples of sponsored mobility and then generalised across society.
articul8
Dishonest sociopath
Gorski?! jeez, does the argument for engaging with the entire critical theoretical tradition fall because you argue with him?
At its best critical theory was very conscious of its - historically unavoidable - distance from active working class struggles, not least because it came to fruition in a context of massive defeats.
But then Marx, buried away in the British Library offering a critique of classical political economy, wasn't on the barricades either. Nor can Capital be readily followed by a mass audience. But should we dismiss it on these grounds as "irrelevant"?
At its best critical theory was very conscious of its - historically unavoidable - distance from active working class struggles, not least because it came to fruition in a context of massive defeats.
But then Marx, buried away in the British Library offering a critique of classical political economy, wasn't on the barricades either. Nor can Capital be readily followed by a mass audience. But should we dismiss it on these grounds as "irrelevant"?
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
No one is. Stop painting over peoples points in such a melodramatic manner.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
...and please don't reduce relevance down to either being on the barricades or on the bins - that sort of thing just hammers home my point about these separations that you're supporting.
articul8
Dishonest sociopath
OK taking your protestations at face value...The title is descriptive, not normative. "'Critical theory' has historically emerged in relation to, but has subsequently been institutionalised as distinct from, social movements. This is a historical fact. No one here is claiming that critical thinking does not goes on in the social movements themselves, or that 'theory' has any value in isolation from those movements. If anything, they are arguing the opposite.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
The title is descriptive "'critical theory' has historically emerged in relation to, but has subsequently been institutionalised as distinct from, social movements. This is a historical fact. It is not a claim that no critical thinking goes on in the social movements themselves, or that 'theory' has any value in isolation from those movements. If anything, they are arguing the opposite.
It was always been institutionalided, that was characteristic of it from the word go, it was built on this seperation that i'm talking about. And my point is about social life rather than social movements...
articul8
Dishonest sociopath
Ok but there aren't there degrees of institutionalisation? You seem to think there is the side of the angels (workers, social life, spontaneous creativity) and the dark side (Bureaucracy, class hierarchy, officialdom etc.) with nothing whatsoever in between?
Given that we think/act/work/live in a society that is mediated by all the historically and materially specific determinations of capitalist development, the idea that there is some repository of thinking that is somehow totally "pristine" and free of all insitutional influence is for the birds.
Given that we think/act/work/live in a society that is mediated by all the historically and materially specific determinations of capitalist development, the idea that there is some repository of thinking that is somehow totally "pristine" and free of all insitutional influence is for the birds.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Ok given that there's degrees are we not allowed to try and place people and the way they approach things on the scale?
(And now you're painting me into being some sort of romantic advocate of pure thought!)
(And now you're painting me into being some sort of romantic advocate of pure thought!)
articul8
Dishonest sociopath
Not pure thought - but Romantic pursuit of Absolute creative essence of mental and material being, maybe? Come on admit it, in fact you are a heathen Pantheist
in terms of measuring people along a scale, isn't the point ultimately to rip up the scale - "the transvaluation of all values"??
in terms of measuring people along a scale, isn't the point ultimately to rip up the scale - "the transvaluation of all values"??
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Or perhaps just a louder, more self-avowedly-engaged audience, considering how many of those idealists went on to become shit-cunts.
Do I think a gap has opened up? - well, undoubtedly there was a retreat into the institutions in the wake of 68 when "theory" was speaking to a much more engaged and committed audience.
So, nothing to do with the fact that academic "experts" have lost a great deal of authority over the last 40 or so years (and I'd rather not look at Bernard Henri-Levy if I don't absolutely have[/b to)?
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
I smiled when I saw the thread title and did think 'BA's going to be on this one'
Completely agree with you on this one tho. Probably a great discussion, but where's the relevance? Are they saying that the modern w/c should be aspiring to be poets and artists instead of consumers? Probably not.
Seems more like they're saying that the modern working classes can't, and anyway shouldn't, aspire to be anything but consumers.
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
See, that's what I thought initially, but then thought 'Nahhhh, they wouldn't be saying that, surely?'
articul8
Dishonest sociopath
I take it you're referring to the Frankfurters? The Culture Industry thesis was a polemical exaggeration for heuristic purposes - it was a slap in the face to all the Cold War warriors of one side or another who thought that "freedom" existed in the West or the Soviet Bloc and that Nazism was just an inexplicable eruption into history.
They stayed faithful to a vision of transfigured experience even in conditions where they thought no-one was forseeably in a position to deliver it . Strikes me as an exemplary instance of committed intellectual engagement, given the limitations and historical/class/institutional constraints under which they were operating.
They stayed faithful to a vision of transfigured experience even in conditions where they thought no-one was forseeably in a position to deliver it . Strikes me as an exemplary instance of committed intellectual engagement, given the limitations and historical/class/institutional constraints under which they were operating.
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
BTW, is there a link type link to the pdf you mentioned earlier?
articul8
Dishonest sociopath
yes, I've now uploaded it to here:
http://rapidshare.com/files/354368769/The_Nights_Of_Laber_all.pdf.html
http://rapidshare.com/files/354368769/The_Nights_Of_Laber_all.pdf.html
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
Sweet, will have a gander at that when I get home. I don't think work will allow me to dl it...
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
At least that's what has been argued after the fact.
Or, perhaps, an exemplary instance of stubbornness?
In my experience, you tend to need to be committed to such theses to actually credit them, and as you may have guessed, I'm not.
articul8
Dishonest sociopath
If there's ever a country where the separation between mental and manual labour has been deified it's bloody france. (Sorry for messing the thread up A8
You really should read this book by Ranciere - it takes aim at precisely this reification of mental and manual labour, and is highly critical of intellectualism and conservative forms of Labourist politics. He reads the output of working class mavericks/oddballs/dreamers etc as symptomatic of the explosive potential of agency in attempts of workers precisely to be other than "workers" as defined by both bosses but also by the collective traditions of their own peers.
I guess it might have a romantic bias towards the singular/the particular/the marginal/the idosyncratic etc rather than as a collective thinking outside of inherited categories. I've only read the first chapter...
But I'm enjoying it more than I've enjoyed any work of this sort for a long time - in some ways it gets at what I appreciate in the Frankfurt School without the mandarin pose and residual vanguardism. Sounds like JR had a chequered political history but at least he seems to have emerged from the Althusserian and Maoist groupuscules with a healthy rejection of their politics.
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