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40861 supplement -- rank: 1000

Trond Andresen wrote: >.. who I find to be nearly as difficult to read as the French pomo gurus >themselves. So I gave up. Having a science/technology background, I get much >more out of Noam Chomsky's or Alan Sokal's critical writings on these issues. >For Sokal, see > >http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/index.html > >Is their stuff to simplicistic for the literature/philosphy crowd? I'm not part of that crowd, but it's too simplistic for me - especially since Soka ...

Document Size:	5458
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon May 25 10:09:12 PDT 1998

40862 more Rorty -- rank: 1000

God, this is awful. This may be the worst paragraph I've read all month: "To bring this about, it would help if American leftists stopped asking whether or not Walter Reuther's attempt to bourgeoisify the auto workers was objectivly reactionary. It would also help if they emphasized the similarities rather than the differences between Malcolm X and Bayard Rustin, between Susan B. Anthony and Emma Goldman, between Catharine MacKinnon and Judith Bulter. The sectarian divisions which plagued M ...

Document Size:	5059
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon May 25 10:01:32 PDT 1998

40863 queers -- rank: 1000

Maria Gilmore wrote: >But the wall progressives keep >slamming into is the wall of class, class which cuts across race, gender and >sexual orientation. The class situation in this society isn't getting better, >it's getting much worse. I know, we all know that...or do we? Depends on >where you live and what job you have and the kind of money you make...which is >what I think people like Moore and maybe Alterman are trying to point out. What's exasperating to me is that Moore ...

Document Size:	8604
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon May 25 09:45:16 PDT 1998

40864 Identity politics -- rank: 1000

Les Schaffer wrote: >Say, is it REALLY TRUE that Cockburn had his page allotment halved for >dubious reasons?. The judgment of whether the reasons were dubious is yours, but the editors said they couldn't justify Cockburn having 2 pages when all the other columnists had one. His former second page was given over to Patricia Williams. In the letter announcing the cutback, Katrina vanden Heuvel and Victor Navasky urged Cockburn to stop attacking his Nation colleagues, and to stop attacking & ...

Document Size:	5023
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon May 25 09:14:36 PDT 1998

40865 rich get richer -- rank: 1000

[This multiply forwarded post bounced because its header was too long.] May 17, 1998 The Toronto Star By Dalton Camp Surprise: Rich getting richer, poor poorer .... snip ........ In a new book coming soon to bookstores near you, James Laxer writes about The (Penguin) being waged now between the two remaining classes in society - a dominant class and a dominated one. StatsCan published last year a study showing that 1996 average incomes of the poorest fifth of Canadian families fell by more t ...

Document Size:	5875
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Sun May 24 18:21:35 PDT 1998

40866 queers -- rank: 1000

John St. Clair wrote: >I'm unsure what to make of what you mean by "being against the queers." If >you're asking if Rorty is homophobic, then I think the answer is no. If >you're asking would he object to certain forms of essentialist queer >identity-theory, then the answer is probably yes. But let's not confuse >identity politics with the politics of identity-theory. No, I don't think he's homophobic, but, and I admit I've read very little of his stuff, my sense is that ...

Document Size:	5812
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Sun May 24 15:42:07 PDT 1998

40867 supplement -- rank: 1000

Doug Henwood wrote: >John St. Clair wrote: > >>Doug, I know you're not a philosopher, but have you *read* Rorty? I mean, if >>you're making the claim that he's *against* Derrida, I couldn't agree with >>you. Take a look at, for example: > >Ok, then it's just the queers I guess. And, answering myself, I should add that I bet that American purity thinking is behind Alterman and other vulgar versions of antipostmodernism. Doug

Document Size:	5044
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Sun May 24 13:28:15 PDT 1998

40868 Alterman and Rorty (was "Re: Some of what Alterman said) -- rank: 1000

John St. Clair wrote: >Doug, I know you're not a philosopher, but have you *read* Rorty? I mean, if >you're making the claim that he's *against* Derrida, I couldn't agree with >you. Take a look at, for example: Ok, then it's just the queers I guess. Doug

Document Size:	4945
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Sun May 24 13:22:13 PDT 1998

40869 Alterman and Rorty (was "Re: Some of what Alterman said) -- rank: 1000

Frances Bolton (PHI) wrote: >The two are virtually indistinguishable. Is this just standard liberal >doctrine? Isn't this just one more attempt (by Rorty on the high end and Alterman on the low) to assert some pragmatic, pure native strain Americanism, against all that decadent and foreign stuff going on in the humanities departments? In the 50s it was Marxists; in the 90s it's Derrideans and queers. It's insulting to drag Whitman into this agenda. Doug

Document Size:	5244
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Sun May 24 12:25:05 PDT 1998

40870 Identity politics -- rank: 1000

Brad De Long wrote: >But what stayed with me were the last three paragraphs: > > "But here's the twist. [Reformist Social-Democratic > Leftist Nelson] Lichtenstein is part of a perfectly > Rortyite reformist Campaign for a Living Wage at > the University of Virginia. This campaign is not > about ending sexism, racism, or homophobia, but > about getting janitorial staff a few extra bucks > an hour. Who are its volunteers? Primarily, says > Lichtenstein, faculty ...

Document Size:	5994
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Sun May 24 11:48:14 PDT 1998

40871 Identity politics -- rank: 1000

Les Schaffer wrote: >okay. okay. i can't stand the suspense anymore. > >Will __someone__ please tell the rest of us what this alterman guy >said, so we can judge it for ourselves on its (de)merits. Unfortunately, The Nation didn't put Alterman's column up on their website, nor did they post Katha Pollitt's excellent column in the new issue that responds to it. Since most Nation subscribers won't get their issues for a few more days, a couple of typed excerpts from Pollitt's column (I ...

Document Size:	8295
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Sun May 24 11:27:30 PDT 1998

40872 Laughter on the Left? -- rank: 1000

Dennis R Redmond wrote: >But I would argue that Leftist, subversive, genuinely progressive humor >really is qualitatively different from Rightwing humor. Lots of lefties have problems with humor, I think, because of the large helping of aggression it often disguises. The right, obviously, has no such problems - like this fellow.... >Buchanan's stupidity is the stupidity of our entire mass-culture Buchanan isn't stupid, not at all. He's a brilliant polemicist, who can turn a phrase and k ...

Document Size:	5261
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Sun May 24 11:02:12 PDT 1998

40873 Identity politics -- rank: 1000

Rakesh Bhandari wrote: >As this speaks to this list's concern with identity politics, I am >forwarding a letter I sent to Nation. >Yours, rb > >Eric Alterman's banal reflections (May 25) on divisions in the left are >confused as well[....] Please note that this piece was the first salvo of Alterman's new column. He really went out of his way to pick a fight, didn't he? The Nation should be trying to end this idiotic war, not promote it. Outbursts like Alterman's give the Le ...

Document Size:	4927
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Sat May 23 11:05:43 PDT 1998

40874 Statements on Suharto Resignation -- rank: 1000

Patrick Bond wrote: >Does anyone know what's happened to Sukarno's daughter in this? >Wasn't she the progressive leader of the extraparliamentary opposition? Jeff Winters, my guru on Indonesia whom I interviewed the other night for the radio, says she's virtually invisible. The opposition movement, such as it is, has no leadership and no program. They seem to have fractured for now, now that Suharto is out of office, though not necessarily out of power. Doug

Document Size:	4963
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Sat May 23 07:57:58 PDT 1998

40875 Slate screams politics! -- rank: 1000

Now here's an objective take on things, from the Microsoft-owned Slate. For some reason I paid to subscribe to this thing. >Date: Fri, 22 May 1998 09:51:30 -0700 (PDT) >From: Slate Magazine <delivery at slate.com> >To: slate-announce at microsoft.nwnet.com >Subject: SLATE News - May 22, 1998 >Sender: slate-announce-owner at microsoft.nwnet.com >Precedence: bulk > >May 22, 1998 > >Dear Reader, > >State attorneys general are everywhere: They're suing Micro ...

Document Size:	5849
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Fri May 22 11:26:17 PDT 1998