This is excellent. Do not unthinkingly use the language that is handed to you, for sure. One example I come back to a lot is the portmanteau of ‘Brexit’, a term that was always somewhat childish and silly (I love making portmanteaus precisely because of this) that for me removed a lot of the weight from the EU leave referendum. A meaninglessness that was beautifully summed up by “Brexit means Brexit”.
A few days ago I started thinking about the critical intellectualizations of "wokism" and how despite claiming a radical pedigree for the critique, people like Liu (Chibber doesn't even do that) or Rockhill are in fact regurgitating a reactionary version of history. Liu, appealing claims to build on the Ehrenreichs' PMC thesis which, although problematic in some ways, was wrestling with the restructuring of the workforce as the US economy was stagnating its industrial growth — and in later year the Ehrenreichs basically described that substantial strata of what they coined as PMC underwent proletarization, more or less killing their thesis and rendering it useless for any good faith author. More than anything, to me Liu seems to pull from Brook's Bobos in Paradise, this mangled story of radicalism turn Reaganism that ignores the violent repression of the civil rights movement and the counter-culture.
Rockhill, likewise, claims to continue and popularize Losurdo's work on Western Marxism, but in dealing with the culturalist and idealist turn in radical he follows more in LaRouche's conspiratorial approach of hunting for relations with the CIA (Liu similarly does that in a recent article), than doing any sort of reasonable critique of the thinkers and movements he sets his sights on. Also, while I haven't read exhaustively read Rockhill's work, I find that, as opposed to Losurdo, he has seems to have a major blindspot in including Heidegger and Nietzsche in his intelectual histories, two thinkers who cast a suffocating shadow on XXth century philosophy and aesthetics, least of all on the post-modern Western Marxists that he criticizes.
I've read the book - it's very good. And very different to the pre-launch media tour. I imagine the book deal was significant so perhaps there's a pressure to sell, which might explain some of the decisions behind the pre-launch tour.
I’d live to read an extended review by you.
Excellent text. Let me aak you, I really want to get to know better Stuart Hall's work. In what text can i find about these floating meanings?
Thank you! Stuart Hall laid on his theory of race as a floating signifier in a 1997 lecture. You can find it here: https://youtu.be/PodKki9g2Pw?si=1gMsz6yWZ_eEiYKL
Thanks! I also found its tranacription on a book
This is excellent. Do not unthinkingly use the language that is handed to you, for sure. One example I come back to a lot is the portmanteau of ‘Brexit’, a term that was always somewhat childish and silly (I love making portmanteaus precisely because of this) that for me removed a lot of the weight from the EU leave referendum. A meaninglessness that was beautifully summed up by “Brexit means Brexit”.
A few days ago I started thinking about the critical intellectualizations of "wokism" and how despite claiming a radical pedigree for the critique, people like Liu (Chibber doesn't even do that) or Rockhill are in fact regurgitating a reactionary version of history. Liu, appealing claims to build on the Ehrenreichs' PMC thesis which, although problematic in some ways, was wrestling with the restructuring of the workforce as the US economy was stagnating its industrial growth — and in later year the Ehrenreichs basically described that substantial strata of what they coined as PMC underwent proletarization, more or less killing their thesis and rendering it useless for any good faith author. More than anything, to me Liu seems to pull from Brook's Bobos in Paradise, this mangled story of radicalism turn Reaganism that ignores the violent repression of the civil rights movement and the counter-culture.
Rockhill, likewise, claims to continue and popularize Losurdo's work on Western Marxism, but in dealing with the culturalist and idealist turn in radical he follows more in LaRouche's conspiratorial approach of hunting for relations with the CIA (Liu similarly does that in a recent article), than doing any sort of reasonable critique of the thinkers and movements he sets his sights on. Also, while I haven't read exhaustively read Rockhill's work, I find that, as opposed to Losurdo, he has seems to have a major blindspot in including Heidegger and Nietzsche in his intelectual histories, two thinkers who cast a suffocating shadow on XXth century philosophy and aesthetics, least of all on the post-modern Western Marxists that he criticizes.
I think Ash Sarkar meant well. Her explanation of her issues makes much more sense, and I hope her book explains it better.
I've read the book - it's very good. And very different to the pre-launch media tour. I imagine the book deal was significant so perhaps there's a pressure to sell, which might explain some of the decisions behind the pre-launch tour.