Kabinettspolitik: critical theory applied to now

[Ralph Dumain]

You'll get no argument from me here.  This also reminds me of some 
unfinished business, i.e. my account of the Frankfurt School session at the 
Socialist Scholars Conference.  As I summarized a while back, one of the 
speakers relayed her experiences in teaching the conceptions of the culture 
industry to working class students.  I had something more to say about this 
rather than accept it at face value, and more about the application of 
critical theory (in aesthetics and other matters) to American culture.  My 
mind is a blank now, so I will have to review this material.  However, in 
general, here's the task as I see it, beginning with this truism: the 
theory developed in connection with the pre-reflective cultural experience 
of the Frankfurters, based in Europe though later slightly modified by 
their sojourn in the USA.  This means, for example, that when we study 
their work (excepting Adorno's crap on jazz), we are importing their 
cultural context in making sense of their ideas.  The speaker who had some 
interesting things to say about Adorno on aesthetic experience himself only 
used examples from European classical music.  This is instructive, of 
course, but the transplantation of these ideas to our own context must be 
more thorough, and this has not happened.  The "culture industry" is an 
obvious concept to explore and exploit and obviously has direct resonance 
to the American scene.  But this cannot be done effectively without serious 
exploration of the aesthetic issues involved given our cultural experience 
of the past six decades (at least) and the discriminating aesthetic 
judgments some of us have been able to develop which may assist in 
analyzing with greater precision both aesthetic creativity and corruption.

What applies to aesthetics and the culture industry applies across the 
board.  Mere footnote-whoring cannot get to the bottom of the assumptions 
behind the meaning of the ideas and their application.  One must get to the 
bottom of them and then re-create them from the ground up to apply to 
another social context.

The "footnoting"--i.e. retrospective--aspect of this is to get down to the 
fundamental parameters governing the ideological context of the origination 
of these ideas and then to see how to get beyond them.  My commentaries on 
the Frankfurters, science, and materialism are part of this enterprise.  I 
believe it was Neil McLaughlin who suggested that we need to move beyond 
the old positivism debate.  He suggested a contemporary author I'm not 
familiar with as a source for the understanding of the internal functioning 
of the scientific enterprise.  This may not be exactly the direction my 
interest in this problem takes, as I'm limiting myself to the philosophical 
landscape for the moment.  But why was the intellectual sphere so rigid, 
not only confined by national/linguistic boundaries but by other 
rigidifications hardening the various spheres of German idealism, Soviet 
diamat, logical positivism, critical realism, etc., with inevitable effects 
on the territory the Frankfurt School could stake out for itself given what 
it inherited and what it had to struggle against?

My point is, it is only our lack of imagination that need confine us, 
although our minds are terrorized and limited by our social milieu, and 
here academia is no exception.  But potentially we can overcome the 
inescapable provincialism of times past; we don't have to remain locked in 
the artificial divisions of knowledge, even within philosophy, even within 
"Marxism", let alone within the intellectual universe as a whole.  My 
examples drawn from a neglected area of American philosophy (which BTW 
suffered under McCarthyism) are meant to illustrate the restrictions 
arbitrarily placed upon the universe of knowledge.

There is an added fortuitous lesson to be drawn from my own experience: why 
couldn't I take advantage of the resources that were sitting right there in 
the philosophy dept. where I was living in Buffalo instead of wasting a 
decade hanging around with air-headed artists?  I'm being facetious, but 
many a jest hides a truth.  It illustrates the nature of the gap to be 
overcome.

Finally, on the question of ideology today, I believe much of it hangs 
analytically on the concept of cynical reason, but grounded in historical 
materialism.  Peter Sloterdijk started the ball rolling on this, but he 
couldn't follow through, instead ending up as a typical European 
intellectual wanker.  But the nature of the impasse we are in today in the 
USA  has roots going back at least to the mid-'70s and so must our 
analysis.  As I keep telling people: it's the '70s, stupid.

At 02:10 PM 5/11/2003 -0400, grok wrote:
>This is very concrete and real, useful work here above; not (in itself)
>the sort of intellectually relativist, evasive, PoMo -- frankly
>petit-bourgeois -- verbal diarrhea some of us abhor on academic Lists
>like frankfurt-school (I make allowances for excess verbiage on account
>of lack of clarity...)
>
>In the interests of bridging the yawning maw between IMO the interests
>of workers in their Frankfurt School 'heritage' (especially as expressed
>in the initial aspirations of its 1920's founding -- and perhaps even
>during its rightward-drift, Postwar to the late 1960's), and the
>career-minded baffle-gab of those who probably consider
>frankfurt-school-talk and 'academese' their private, personal turf (i.e.
>no marxists wanted around), or as mere intellectual play (i.e.
>irrelevant to world-historical events of the present time), let me
>simply state that: 'discourse' on *this* level above is PERFECTLY
>non-controversial and IMO useful (though, of course, rather pedestrian
>and 'non-sexy'...)
>
>And let me point out that it is the DUTY of working-class (and
>supporting) intellectuals to try and solve the intellectual problems
>which beset the world working-class, here and now, in their own time (as
>Marx so famously pointed-out). Of course, Academia has, for far too
>long, amply proven that it is full of loquacious sell-outs -- not a few
>of whom have latched-onto 'Critical' (and other) Theory.
>
>Let me put this another way: to say that marxism is 'passe'' is simply
>to be in the camp of the enemy -- never more-so than today. And to hold
>to this within 'Critical' Theory is DOUBLY offensive.
>
>Also, let me point out that because an email like this is about 'cutting
>to the chase' rather than 'getting along', or 'showing off one's
>erudition', etc., of *course* it will rub some people the wrong way! But
>that would be its intent now, wouldn't it?
>
>Feel free to TOTALLY studiously ignore this message.
>Feel free to analyze it to death too, if that's what gets you off...
>
>-- grok.