butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Fair dos - i shall then. Give us a shout when you're finished with it.
Critical Theory and Social Movements today
- Thread starter articul8
- Start date
Idris2002
canadian girlfriend
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)
On French passports you can list your occupation as 'intellectual'.
articul8
Dishonest sociopath
I've printed off myself (link further up thread) as it's out of print. (think there are 2 pages missing from the scan but hell, it's nearly £300 on Amazon).
articul8
Dishonest sociopath
wonder if you can have hybrid versions - call-centre operative/intellectual etc?
gorski
customised free radical
It depends on which philosophers... As in "conservative ones" or "liberal lot" or "lefties" or "ultra" left or right or "in-betweenies" or "not-knowing-whether-they-are-coming-or-going" ones etc. etc.
This is meaningless, really... content-less... you should know better, really....
All these old-fashioned mystifications....
Besides, Marx was middle-class, so what? Moreover, who do you think will take care of culture? Capitalists? No time, they must "run things". Proletarians? When, they must work a lot...
So, these superficial "objections" to a valid question in the top post are ridiculous to the extreme and childishly empty of any content... Just "memememememeeeeeeeeee"....
Honestly, some people...
gorski
customised free radical
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Here come ze thinkers - across the ice, across the rolling sea, bayonets forward.
revol68
what, fucking what?
More like silencing, at least when the likes of you are concerned...
Well I am dumbstruck.
I am presuming from this response that you see no problem with your remark, on the contrary you celebrate it?
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
It's easily the singlest most stupid thing i've ever read on this particular forum (excluding the clowns and goblin types). A child could see the massive gaping hole shouting to the world that it exists. Gorski can't.
revol68
what, fucking what?
he's such a parody of an 'intelllectual' that he isn't even fit enough to be a strawman.
is he really paid to be an academic?
Jonti
what the dormouse said
Yo, blud, you ain't seen nothin' yet
If ever I saw a fucking huuuughe chip on one's shoulder....
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
Oh lordy, lord.
Yes, the proles need the m/c, probably the bohemian m/c, to 'take care' of 'culture'. Absolutely.
articul8
Dishonest sociopath
It's like Plato's Republic for children - let the shoemaker get on with his natural aptitude for making shoes and don't let him pretend he can think, leave that to people who's business it is. Ranciere's "The Philosopher and his Poor" is essential reading on this attitude.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
I've got a shed load of his stuff ready to print off now. Can't help being put off by the name though - i mentally associate with with pompous French philosophes for some reason.
gorski
customised free radical
gorski
customised free radical
Only someone full of hatred can't see the good side of some of the "middle class labour of love"...
Btw, one thing you surely are "unskilled" in - Philosophy....
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
gorski
customised free radical
Ranciere's "The Philosopher and his Poor" is essential reading on this attitude.
Misunderstanding, I'm happy to report...
At leas in my case, as you should know, I don't make something OK [automatically] by simply stating the "matter of fact state of affairs", so easy now...
[What, no middle class here, to defend with pride what has been created by "us", occasionally even defending a possible different "state of affairs", where one works less, has a proper access to education and hence a real chance in life to self-improvement, change of career/profession etc.? Since when is that immediately prescriptive/normative?]
gorski
customised free radical
Nowt more pompous than a half-wit, masquerading as know-it-all, arbiter of life and death, knowing and wanting nothing but bloody conflict, with an aptly chosen nick......
What's next: Stalin is the greatest son of ours, followed by Mao, then Hitler, Pol Pot and so forth...???
articul8
Dishonest sociopath
Butch - be interested to know what you make of him - his basic insight seems to be working class identity inherently exceeds/displaces/becomes other to itself etc. (does bounce off Deleuze, Derrida etc.). But its more socially grounded - he uses it to explain that a great deal of discursive effort goes into insisting that that workers are workers and nothing else and the division of labour leaves a privileged elite to not to be so defined.
It's a view that is entirely opposed to conservative kinds of class organisation or identity. But would reject any attempt to privilege "working class" values/life/indentity as inherently valuable - because it leaves the core distinctions in place. Workers are at the most revolutionary when they are refusing to be workers but are acting out possibilities that are denied to them in reality.
It's a view that is entirely opposed to conservative kinds of class organisation or identity. But would reject any attempt to privilege "working class" values/life/indentity as inherently valuable - because it leaves the core distinctions in place. Workers are at the most revolutionary when they are refusing to be workers but are acting out possibilities that are denied to them in reality.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Now you see, that does sound right up my alley.
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
Is he making a variant on the 'calling someone a victim creates in their mind they are a victim' line? That's what it looks like - by attempting to create a class identity and placing value on it, it instantly becomes limiting because it means that people can't define themselves around anything else.
Moreover, many that seek to define w/c in terms of values/identity are actually part of the same system of control as the wider system (even if done for good intentions) because they limit people to thinking they can only be a shoemaker, and never a philosopher?
Moreover, many that seek to define w/c in terms of values/identity are actually part of the same system of control as the wider system (even if done for good intentions) because they limit people to thinking they can only be a shoemaker, and never a philosopher?
articul8
Dishonest sociopath
The emphasis is on how difficult it to is - how much discusive effort it takes - to fix what identities/values etc into this homogeneous frame - and working class politics is amongst the ways of inculcating in workers themselves the belief that they identify themselves in the same limited frame of reference.
BUT it's so difficult precisely because workers are creative communicators - they don't always act out their own part (hence interest in theatre, performativity, subversive reiteration etc. - like Judith Butler) or - in having the ability to communicate in writing - to find an audience that they weren't directly addressing or to say more than they meant (Derrida on grammatology etc.). He's interested in the abundance of real historical, archival, evidence of the buried efforts of workers to contest their total interpellation (sorry terrible Althusserian word) - the "this is what you are and nothing else".
The argument is not that it is possible for a shoemaker to become a philosopher (the social democratic argument about social mobility) - but that "philosophy" exists only insofar as it has as a fundamental objective the task of excluding those who have no business philosophising.
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
Surely that's 'philosophers' rather than 'philosophy' IYSWIM? And indeed your grammatical construction in the first 2 paragraphs
But thanks for clarifying, and by and large I agree.Are you referring here to those w/c folks who won't be tied down by 'traditional' w/c labels about behaviour, interests etc?
articul8
Dishonest sociopath
Surely that's 'philosophers' rather than 'philosophy' IYSWIM? And indeed your grammatical construction in the first 2 paragraphs
I'm not sure what "philosophy" is other than whatevery people who society recognises as "philosophers" do. It's not synonymous with Truth. Which is still a necessary concept. Your little dig is interesting. You could easily say that Ranciere should just paraphrase his own argument simply, and not dress it up in ways that would turn off a working class readership.
But that's condescending in its own way, because it defines and polices a class of people "who can understand plain language and nothing else". I agree it does mean that the historian, the theorist, the philosopher etc. and the audience have to accept that their own position, speech, performance is implicated in the playing/speaking/writing out of social roles.
yes, but also people who maybe sit slightly at angles from easy class divisions, who trouble and displace the definitions.
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
Explaining a sophisticated idea using plain language so that it's understood by the widest audience possible is not condescending IMO, it's utterly necessary. It also tends to reveal sophistry and internal contradictions in those selfsame ideas quite well too because the cover of technical language has been removed.
I also don't mean 'simple' language when I say 'plain' either - I learned the 'philosophical' basis for QM (what I call the 'art student' understanding, i.e. I don't get the math) via a semi-humourous book called 'The Bluffers Guide To The Quantum Universe' - it had explanations of QM and lots of other bits of high end physics that actually went into greater depth, but still maintained clarity of writing, than many other bits of pop-cosmology I've read. I don't think there are that many philosophes who go out of their way to make their ideas that accessible - whether this is simply that there are no really good writers among the world's philosophers, or that the majority really do think that they need to maintain a linguistic barrier (which would be very sad if true) I don't know.
One more thing tho -
- while this is the topic of conversation, I apply my ideas about using the plainest terms possible to anyone reading it, not specifically the w/c. The imparting of knowledge to the widest possible audience is of paramount importance, and the prevention of this by any means should always be fought against as a general principle, not just when we're talking about one class or other.
Example?
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