[lit-ideas] Re: What does "Marxist" mean, after all?
- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 8 Feb 2006 11:50:55 -0800
Very interesting, John! This note goes a long way toward clarifying your
position. Durkheim was very patriotic as I recall, but I can't say that I was
influenced by him. I was by Marx and Freud. I've shrugged off all of Marx's
Dialectical Materialism and while I disagree with Freud intellectually, I
haven't quite shrugged him off. One of the most fascinating books I read in
recent years was Wittgenstein Reads Freud, The Myth of the Unconscious by
Jacques Bouveresse, 1995. He argues rather convincingly (at least he convinced
me) that Freudâs Unconscious was a fraud . . thatâs not the right word . .
. Apparently Wittgenstein demolished Freudâs Unconscious but not in a
systematic way â in bits and pieces as he taught. Bouveresse brings the
arguments together in this book. I argued against Freudâs unconscious some
place, I donât think it was on Lit-Ideas, but I find myself slipping back
into an acceptance of it.
By the way, I didnât actually say anyone here was a Marxist, although I admit
to thinking Judy was a partial Marxist as I say to her in another note.
I read four books by two anthropologists during my recent studies of Islam:
Islam Observed, and After the Fact, by Clifford Geertz; and Islam and
Revolution in the Middle East, and Religion and Power in Morocco by Henry
Munson, Jr. I believe you once told me they address a different aspect of
Anthropology than you have been interested in.
Lawrence
-----Original Message-----
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of John McCreery
Sent: Wednesday, February 08, 2006 10:28 AM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] What does "Marxist" mean, after all?
On 2/9/06, Judith Evans <judithevans001@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Not that it's a big deal to me, still; I'm not a
> Marxist!! (If I were, I'd say so.)
>
My thinking is influenced by Marx? Does that make me a Marxist?
My thinking is influenced by Jesus? Does that make me a Christian?
In both cases the answer is no. But, again in both cases, to regard
the influence as a taint, a mark of Cain to be concealed, seems silly
and, at least in my case, intellectually counterproductive.
Victor Turner, the anthropologist who has most influenced my thinking
about how anthropology and thinking about the nature of human
societies ought to be done started out a Communist and converted to
Catholicism. His thinking was influenced by Marx, Durkheim and Freud,
from the first two of whom he took the importance of beginning with
the relations of production, exchange and consumption that constitute
social structures while from the first and third he adopted a
basically tragic view of the human condition, as inevitably shot
through with conflict and contradiction.
Marx was also a powerful influence on Claude Levi-Strauss and Pierre
Bourdieu, who, like Turner, have influenced my own intellectual work.
Marx to me is, like Freud, a seminal thinker whose work is a source of
inspiration to many and of ideas without which the modern world would
not be what it is today but whose work is no longer a canon to any but
a handfuls of diehards who are, as it were, Copernicans in a world
where Kepler, Newton and Einstein have substantially altered the
Copernican vision without invalidating its basic insightâEarth does,
indeed, revolve around the Sun.
In this day and age, calling someone a Marxist is like calling someone
a Christian, a term of praise or abuse whose referential meaning is a
muddle of possibilities, no clearly defined Cartesian "You see!"
John McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd.
55-13-202 Miyagaya, Nishi-ku
Yokohama 220-0006, JAPAN
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