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

[Joseph Tracy]

 I did not read Graebner as "moaning" for new theorists but noting a change. I agree that there is less than a dearth of new thinkers. There are many powerful intellectuals still being published.  But while many try to stir the waters, Graebner among them, the waves of thought seem to have little impact on the dominant forces of academic debate and even less impact on the larger society. Perhaps one reason is the apparent ineffectiveness of the most important ideas of our time, where even the most proven theories about global realities that require public assimilation and dramatic action have little practical impact  .  I'm speaking of climate change and environmental devastation. First, any philosophy that fails to incorporate this reality is patently incomplete . Second, it brings into question the degree to which even the clearest, best, most universal and most life preserving ideas can change a civilization deeply reliant on and addicted to  ignoring ideas requiring uncomfortable changes.   There is  arguably a large sense in which academia, if not necessarily the individual academic,  is itself  as embedded in a pattern of global self destruction as the institutions it fuels, essentially endorsing a future which is madly unsustainable.  

One really has to ask whether education  has quite the glorious history and liberating power ascribed to it. Educated societies still seem more likely to be nasty greedy empire builders than anything else.  It isn't that I don't want freedom of thought and investigation of all things. Good things doubtless come from academia, but there seems to be a fatal flaw and I have a hard time with the notion that it is just, as often repeated, "human nature". Too many have stepped away from the Faustian bargain that seems to define our fate.    
   
On Feb 11, 2014, at 5:05 AM, Matthew Cissell wrote:

> P-Listers,
> 
> 	I'll take the bit about the puppets, but the moaning for more great Mandarins of thought is not my cup of meat. He seems to be saying "Two thousand years and no new gods!" Is this his lament? 
> 
> 	Not a bad article but I have some problems with it. He mentions Mauss and Durkheim but where is Bourdieu's name? Pierre Bourdieu did not enjoy the same fashionability that other french thinkers experienced, but his work fits much better with the subject matter of the article. (The omission of his name shows that much has yet to be appreciated and studied.) We could add to this that many would have never read Ernst Cassirer had Bourdieu not pushed for translation of the great thinker. 
> 	
> 	Nowadays everybody wants to coin a term or create soem grand system so that their name rockets to academic stardom. Enough already. 
> 
> 	" What American academics expect from France is an intellectual high, the ability to feel one is participating in wild, radical ideas ..."    Erm, no. Not this American, nor John Searle for that matter. Searle has some interesting things to say about french academic rhetoric, the man had conversed more than a bit with both Foucault and Bourdieu.
> 
> 	It seems to me that now is a good time to reflect back on the massive output of ideas that started in the mid 20th c. We need no new Derridas and Zizeks. We would do better to understand the geneology of the canonization of certain theorists, to understand why Freud was embraced and none knew the name of Emil Kraeplin, why Heidegger and not Cassirer, why in the 90's one had to know Deleuze but Bourdieu was unacknowledged or simply ignored.
> 
> 	There are many great thinkers doing good work but they are not the Mandarins of yesteryear. Dan Zahavi, Stanley Cavell, Itamar Even-Zohar, Roger Chartier are all doing great work in their respective fields, but they are not like Baudrillard and Zizek and that whole crew.
> 
> 
> ciao
> MC Otis sitting in his cave
> 
> 	
> 
> 
> On Tuesday, February 4, 2014 10:48 PM, rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think we all forget, at least in this country (US) how conservative a country like France really is.
> 
> 
> On Tue, Feb 4, 2014 at 1:57 AM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
> Will be reading more Graebner. The puppet article was great. The anthropology of cops and anti-globalist protestors as the empire staggers and tightens its grip.
> 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/?listpynchon-l
> 
> 
> 

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