The Division of Labour, Revisited

[kenneth.mackendrick]

> SCOTT:
>   Yes, criticize it forever and ever and ever and ever, because this
> utopian bullshit can never be realized... You, like Horkheimer, 
Adorno, Heidegger, and Derrida, will be sitting by the roadside 
waiting for Godot forever until you find that not only has the time to 
realize philosophy passed, but so also has your time to wait.

Strange bedfellows for strange times eh?  Heidegger jumped on 
board a tank though - Horkheimer turned to theology - Adorno died 
from stress and a bad heart - and Derrida's fate remains to be seen 
(the last I saw him he was chained to a text).

I'm not really holding out - I'm engaging the material that I read and 
the things that I encounter.  My email posts are not just curious rants 
and raves - I'm not in this for a job - a religious studies major 
studying critical theory doesn't stand much of a chance - rather I'm in 
this to try and determine what resources are out there to make this a 
better world.  In other words i'm a moralist in spades - I just hide it 
behind a thin veneer of cynicism.  I wouldn't contribute to this list 
unless I thought ideas and arguments had an effect on human lives.

The question should not be whether one is utopian or not - rather 
whether one is utopian enough.  Strange days.

I try to recognize things for what they are.  So far I am unconvinced 
that any instutionional structure is without oppression - Habermas's 
arguments included.  I refuse to stand by and say "well, this is the 
best there is..." or "it must be this way."  and this is romance?  i 
prefer the term disenchanted.

and so, scott, tender me this - what will you do with me?  I ask you, 
and i'll ask just this once, care for me won't you?  when the sun has 
gone down and my skeletons come out of the closet to haunt me.  
stay the night with me while i rest in bed and i will thank you now 
because later i may not have the chance.

emphatically yours, all the days of my life,
ken