Reason and Intellectuals and ....

[H. Curtiss Leung]

Jonathan writes:

> I'll take the time to reply to H. Curtiss Leung, because although a bit
> confused about my post, it is at least a civil attempt to inquire into my
> intentions and background.  I'll try to deal creatively with this
> opportunity.
> 

	Jesus, they must treat you pretty badly at HP if you're going to 
call something as snotty as what I wrote civil.  I'll try to live up to
civility with this post, though.

> 
> ...But seriously, one of the things that needs to be
> discussed on this list is the growth of the temporary labor market as it
> relates to class-identification/interests.  Capital disciplines work by
> drawing as many distinctions as possible between those who serve to
> increase capital.  The temporary worker can serve as scab (and believe me,
> this shop ain't union, and the guy I work with literally begs management
> for sixty and seventy hour weeks--what can I say to that?) in addition to
> reducing overhead for insurance, raises, and "down-time".  I found a way,
> idiosyncratic to my own interests (which have nothing in particular to do
> with a fondness for machine oil), to use the flexibility of temp work to
> serve me.  I have experienced the inside of the temp industry for almost a
> year, and have dug ditches, laid irrigation, weedwacked, and installed
> sliding=glass doors. I have to work to eat and pay my rent, but that
> doesn't mean I can't have the whole whirlwind tour while I'm at it!
> Doesn't make me prole, although I get to work with those who certainly fit
> this description (and voted for Reagan).

	I guess this hinges on how you define prole, then.  I take it to
mean: somebody who sells their labor-power -- and has to sell it.  However,
this doesn't exhaust that person's identity; it's only one category of
many into which somebody can simultaneously fall.  Which leads me to
your comments on:

> 
> Ken's honest puzzlement about what constitutes a "working class" person as
> distinct from a "black" or "lesbian" person is in the right direction,
> especially as this affects the possibilities of organization.  Liberal
> capitalism exploits these differences in what Leclau and Mouffe (Hegemony
> and Socialist Strategy) call "subject positions".  My use of
> "articulation", which it seems I might never be able to..articulate..stems
> from considerations I have given to that book.  Since socialism seems to
> contain some nasty totalizing temptations, I think it is necessary to
> emphasize its "radical democratic" aspects.  Liberal democracy shackles
> our ability to "develop" in terms of our own interests, simply because the
> means to do so is legally, economically, and culturally withheld or broken
> up into pieces and given to hostile "subject positions".  

	Do you know Adorno's essay "Melange" in _Minima Moralia_?  He
starts from the opposite proposition -- that so-called "equality" is
the ideology by which people are hobbled and integrated into capitalism --
but ends up with something that, I think, may be a clue to your notion
of "articulation": "An emancipated society, on the other hand, would
not be a unitary state, but the realization of universality in the
reconciliation of differences."  When you write:

> ...Are you black?  What else are
> you?  Once you have more than one identity, these positions can be
> negotiated and antagonisms can be worked out, both internally between
> members of the gay community, for example (as to the question, who is gay
> and who isn't?) and between different groups.  

I understand you to mean that these negotiations can occur because 
acknowledging that one person can "occupy" more than one "subject
position" can be universally recognized without subordinating any actual 
individual differences.  (anybody out there who thinks they've
wrapped their brain around Adorno's notion of non-identity care to 
comment?)

> These groups are never
> "classes", in my opinion, but aggregates, which can contain mutually
> exclusive identities, and _must_find ways of containing these peripheral
> elements, if the proccess is not to decay into exploitable "oppositions".

Whoa!  "Contain these peripheral elements"?  You're scaring me.

> 
> .. Rap is an aggregate that ranges from stupid dickwielding Gatt your
> ass nonsense (quite popular, as Time-Warner guarantees) to parodies of
> this form (as was been mentioned by someone else on a parallel thread).
> Inbetween there are some really incredible _articulations_ of really
> diverse aspects of black life in america.  And these articulations range
> from gender issues to poverty to colonization to organization , critique,
> and resistance to all the varieties of (white) capitalist power.  Why am I
> interested in this music (to the extent that I am)?  Because it helps me
> talk to the people I work with, and maybe help us help each other out.

	At last -- a clear description of an affirmative use of this
music that doesn't neglect its hazards.  Maybe that aspect of this thread 
can finally go to bed.

> Individuals and individual acts are the foundation of social
> action and organization, but you are correct that deprived of a real
> social context (even an email list _can_ serve as one), articulation
> becomes nostalgic monologue and impotent rage.  I suffered of this all day
> at work due to the postings of Ralph et al., because I couldn't defend
> myself (I chose to go to bed, because 5:30 comes too early), and I felt
> compelled to do so.  So I deferred and reassured myself that the
> opportunity to represent itself.  I can only "temporarily"
>  be deprived of my voice, but life is full of such "not yets", thankfully
> including the "I'm not yet dead" which has brought me back to this thread
> against my better judgement.  In a nutshell, H. Curtiss, I agree with you.
> 

	Thanks -- but don't you think that disagreement plays a vital
role here?  Without it, doesn't cooperation decay into that totalizing
tendency?

-- 
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Curtiss Leung                           Voice:     (212)267-7722 x3033
hleung@prolifics.com                    Facsimile: (212)608-6753 
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