What *did* Bakunin say?

[Michael Bailey]

 Mark Kohut wrote:
> Great stuff on Bakunin......so I will summarize
> from one perspective: Bakunin's 'miracle' is still
> a material one.....[as in dialectical materialism]
> (such a use of Divinity by Bakunin makes me think
> he is kinda alluding to Hegel?)
>

yeah, Marx and the Young Germans and a lot of those God-rejecters work
a lot with Hegel, don't they?
I fear trying to read Hegel would put me into a coma - can't read philosophy...
It's all I can do to get through the philosophical paragraphs in, say,
a brief bio of one of those guys (I read a nice short one of Marx
recently by some English dude...)

> Whereas in this novel P still holds out for something
> ..different..spiritual (in some sense)....that famous
> 'grace' we later get in AtD?

I myself tend to hold out for that sort of thing (escapist,
other-worldly, "mystic, wonderful" (although without the "inherent
violence in the system), woo-woo) so I naturally tend to agree with
you on that point.

The writer of that paper, however, Ms Nucholls, finds differently: she
thinks Oedipa abandons Arrabal's miracle in favor of Bakunin's.

I guess Bakunin's deity, fallen (more like Milton's Satan, if you ask
me...) and trying to recover glimmerings of itself, casts about and in
doing so creates a new reality by some kind of miracle.
And in a way, Oedipa, cast out from her happy home and marriage, in
search of a comfortable and lasting explanation (not to mention living
circumstances) - is making all these little creative efforts of her
own...throwing off sparks of miracle, each one a new reality...

...akin to those of Bakunin's (very strange and poetic) deity...

>>>>>>>>>>>>> side note -- Bakunin's deity is fallen, which of course reminds us of Hector in _Vineland_
(cop as anarchist...or, that is to say, dea agent as modern day bearer
of the emotional impact of major anarchist in 19th century...??? how
can I say that -- because he prevents people imbibing the necessary
sedation to uncomplainingly face capitalism...)