[FRA:] Marcuse question

[Ralph Dumain]

As far as the USA is concerned, the decay of liberalism in the '70s, the 
repression of radicalism and the yuppification of the intellectuals of the 
New Left and the new social movements gave rise to the trends which later 
emerged in the public eye in the '80s as postmodernism.  If one wishes to 
debate competing metaphysical categories--'modernism' vs. 
'postmodernism'--one can certainly blow a lot of hot air doing so, but such 
wasted breath is a barometer of how badly the social order has declined.

If this also means a celebrity death match between Marcuse and Habermas, it 
also shows just how provincial  and in-grown intellectuals have become.

Your own work, BTW, seems to be predicated on a tug of war between Habermas 
and DIALECTIC OF ENLIGHTENMENT.  I don't believe in either of these 
contestants.  Either critical theory contains ideas that can be used or 
it's the perpetuation of another academic specialty.  Not that specialized 
academic studies can't be used--it's a question of how one exploits the 
information.

At 03:43 AM 2/20/2006 +0000, matthew piscioneri wrote:
>Fred,
>If yes, then its the ongoing negative dialectics of subverting the 
>dominant paradigm, at least until such time as the subversion of the 
>dominant paradigm, becomes -- well, er -- the dominant paradigm.
>-----------------------------
>Recently found p/t employment in a coterie of PoMo-ists -- and I like a 
>lot of PoMo theory -- but i was a little shocked at just how dirty a word 
>"modernist" or "modernism" had become.
>
>After an enlightening discussion of the supposedly now-discredited 
>right/wrong binary in terms of "error" correction theory, I thought how 
>come everything that is modernist can be so *wrong* and everything PoMO, 
>so *right*. Not very much of a spectrum of values when it comes to the 
>PoMo/Modernist binary :-).
>-----------------------------
>Lately, recognition of the unbearable persistence of negative being a.k.a 
>the status quo a.k.a the will to power a.k.a the world of suffering has 
>led me away from too much masochistic fretting about all the noble 
>concerns of Critical Theory.
>
>cheers,
>MattP