So, Walter Benjamin and Michel Foucault are in some kind of critical theory afterlife. They get talking, and at some point Foucault asks Benjamin, “Do you think sex is boring?” Benjamin grins and nods, and says, “Yes, if you do it right.”
One of the disadvantages of studying political theory in the US is the fact that Hannah Arendt is, rather inexplicably, taken very seriously. I never felt the slightest encouragement to read her before I moved here, but now I have to read her, and I rather wish I didn’t. Perhaps I’m missing her vital insights, but I’m too put off by her asinine methodology. What do you do with someone who can write:
Each of them, and again none more than Marx, found himself in the grip of certain genuine contradictions. It seems to lie in the nature of this matter that the most obvious solution of these contradictions, or rather the most obvious reason why these great authors should have remained unaware of them is their equation of work with labor, so that labor is endowed by them with certain faculties which only work possesses. This equation always leads into patent absurdities.
Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition
So “patent absurdities” apparently follow from failing to respect a distinction Arendt invented about ten pages earlier, giving little justification of its validity and certainly no explanation as to why it might be relevant to Marx. I’m reminded of fundamentalist Christians, who insist that there is such a thing as a “literal” reading of the bible. This seems like an extraordinarily stupid faith in the fixed meaning of words, as if there is one set of concepts divorced from time and place, that Marx must have been working with the same concepts as Arendt. “The loneliness of the laborer qua laborer is usually overlooked…” Perhaps it’s not “overlooked”? Perhaps those who don’t think the laborer is “lonely” actually disagree with Arendt, and perhaps they disagree with her because she is wrong. Arendt seems incapable of thinking that someone might have a substantive disagreement with her; any divergence is explained by a failure to appreciate the timeless truths Arendt has so generously uncovered for us. This kind of narcissistic insulation from criticism is sometimes put forward as a fault of something called “Theory.” Unusually, this appears to actually apply in Arendt’s case (Arendt isn’t, as far as I know, generally considered part of the amorphous blob of Theory), along with other criticisms that get leveled at the same target: superficial engagements with texts; grand, content-free generalizations; a refusal to give reasons for any of her assertions. I’m a little shocked, actually; I can’t remember the last time I read a respected work which is as bad as The Human Condition.
Actually surprisingly good article by Bob Avakian in this week’s Revolutionary Worker:
At any given time, while in an overall and ultimate sense consistently and systematically applying the communist world outlook and method, in the best possible way, enables you, ultimately and in a fundamental and all-around sense, to get more deeply to the truth than any other world outlook and methodology—qualitatively so—this doesn’t mean that at any given time you necessarily have the truth about something. That’s a contradiction we have to learn to handle much more correctly than it has been handled in the past of our movement, and in the history of the socialist countries.
And reading articles like this does tempt me to join the RCP.
The sound film, far surpassing the theater of illusion, leaves no room for imagination or reflection on the part of the audience, who is unable to respond within the structure of the film, yet deviate from its precise detail without losing the thread of the story.… [Sound films] are so designed that quickness, powers of observation, and experience are undeniably needed to apprehend them at all; yet sustained thought is out of the question if the spectator is not to miss the relentless rush of facts.
— Adorno and Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 126
It seems like a bit of a cheap shot to characterize Adorno and Horkheimer’s analysis of the culture industry as the complaints of old men bewildered by modern culture. But I think there’s something to that, not just in the culture industry theory, but in the Frankfurt school’s theory more generally. Read more↴
Well, that’s not what John Denham is actually saying. He doesn’t need to say it or even think it, as it’s the implicit New Labour model behind this bold policy initiative:
Unemployed people convicted of crimes should receive tougher sentences than those with full-time jobs or caring responsibilities, a leading Labour MP will say today.
John Denham, chair of the influential home affairs select committee, will call for an overhaul of community sentencing to enable courts to mete out tougher punishments for the jobless on the grounds that they have more time on their hands.