(np) so, where are the new French theorists?

[Joseph Tracy]

This puppet article is fabulous. Not a Bailey, but second the thanks.  Funny followed by truly thought provoking; it's fresh and hitting the spot for me even if a few years old.  
On Feb 3, 2014, at 7:00 PM, Michael Bailey wrote:

> You're welcome, brother Bailey -- I think it's fascinating that this Mauss person was Emile Durkheim's nephew...
> 
> at the risk of lionizing David Graeber, he also wrote a nifty something on the giant puppets at WTO & other occasions, a subject sorely under covered IMHO!
> 
> http://zinelibrary.info/phenomenology-giant-puppets-david-graeber
> 
> 
> Apparently there are occasionally openings http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=6066
> 
> 
> John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:
> Damn, that is one good read. Thank you brother Bailey.
> 
> On Mon, Feb 3, 2014 at 9:29 PM, Michael Bailey <mikebailey at gmx.us> wrote:
> > http://libcom.org/library/give-it-away-david-graeber
> >
> > Quotha:
> >
> > ...theory and the 'Maussian Left'.
> >
> > Have you noticed how there aren't any new French intellectuals any more?
> > There was a veritable flood in the late '70s and early '80s: Derrida,
> > Foucault, Baudrillard, Kristeva, Lyotard, de Certeau ... but there has been
> > almost no one since. Trendy academics and intellectual hipsters have been
> > forced to endlessly recycle theories now 20 or 30 years old, or turn to
> > countries like Italy or even Slovenia for dazzling meta-theory.
> >
> > There are a lot of reasons for this. One has to do with politics in France
> > itself, where there has been a concerted effort on the part of media elites
> > to replace real intellectuals with American-style empty-headed pundits.
> > Still, they have not been completely successful. More important, French
> > intellectual life has become much more politically engaged. In the U.S.
> > press, there has been a near blackout on cultural news from France since the
> > great strike movement of 1995, when France was the first nation to
> > definitively reject the "American model" for the economy, and refused to
> > begin dismantling its welfare state. In the American press, France
> > immediately became the silly country, vainly trying to duck the tide of
> > history.
> >
> > Of course this in itself is hardly going to faze the sort of Americans who
> > read Deleuze and Guattari. What American academics expect from France is an
> > intellectual high, the ability to feel one is participating in wild, radical
> > ideas - demonstrating the inherent violence within Western conceptions of
> > truth or humanity, that sort of thing - but in ways that do not imply any
> > program of political action; or, usually, any responsibility to act at all.
> > It's easy to see how a class of people who are considered almost entirely
> > irrelevant both by political elites and by 99 percent of the general
> > population might feel this way. In other words, while the U.S. media
> > represent France as silly, U.S. academics seek out those French thinkers who
> > seem to fit the bill.
> >
> > As a result, some of the most interesting scholars in France today you never
> > hear about at all. One such is a group of intellectuals who go by the rather
> > unwieldy name of Mouvement Anti-Utilitariste dans les Sciences Sociales, or
> > MAUSS, and who have dedicated themselves to a systematic attack on the
> > philosophical underpinnings of economic theory. The group take their
> > inspiration from the great early-20th century French sociologist Marcel
> > Mauss, whose most famous work, The Gift (1925), was perhaps the most
> > magnificent refutation of the assumptions behind economic theory ever
> > written. At a time when "the free market" is being rammed down everyone's
> > throat as both a natural and inevitable product of human nature, Mauss' work
> > - which demonstrated not only that most non-Western societies did not work
> > on anything resembling market principles, but that neither do most modern
> > Westerners - is more relevant than ever. While Francophile American scholars
> > seem unable to come up with much of anything to say about the rise of global
> > neoliberalism, the MAUSS group is attacking its very foundations....
> > - Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
> - Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l

-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l