Capitalist pudding

[matthew cissell]

Hi,

As a small town kid off to Uni in the 90's, I was lost among the names and
concepts being bandied about. There was a subtle and invisible pressure to
learn the lingo and use it: the Other, aporia, deconstruction, and, most
importantly, postmodernism. And all those names like De Man, Baudrillard,
Lacan, etc. I bought the books and dug in. I started to realize that the
way academia embraced all this was rather exceptionally a US phenomenon.
Moreover, it was mostly the English Dept. with its subdivisions of Rhetoric
and all the Whatever-studies that were gobbling it all up without really
digging any deeper. Almost none of the people I encountered had read
anything by Husserl, for example. Or Merleau-Ponty for that matter. Forget
the Analytical cats. That is how I came to have no admiration for certain
so-called thinkers. Zizek is a great a example. Frederic Jameson is
another. And to that list I would add Lacan and Lyotard along with others.
They constitute the Second Betrayal of the Intellectuals. While they were
thinking of cool things to say (Baudrillard: "Americans may have no
identity, but they do have wonderful teeth. " Idiot hadn't seen the teeth,
or lack of, in Kentucky.)

To tackle the very complex issues you mention, I have found it much more
illuminating to delve into Pierre Bourdieu's work. Unlike some so-called
sociologists, he actually carried out studies and analyzed the data
collected and incorporated it into his books ("Distinction", "Homo
Academicus", etc.). Of course that would not be sufficient in and of
itself. To understand what workers want or other values or desires they
have come to hold would involve looking at how Unions are perceived now as
opposed to 80 years ago, shifting voting patterns, NAFTA, Hardhat riots,
Vietnam war, and more. (Oh, and a deep look at how post-WWII Capital -
Banking and Industry - along with fascists set about the slow dismantling
of western liberal democracy, working toward manufactured consent and
engineered ignorance.) Some of that would align with the discontent felt by
workers in other countries and their turn to the right instead of
traditional workers parties focused on economic issues above "culture war
battles". I mean, Alternatif Für Deutschland has gained working class
voters in the former West Germany.

In Solidarity,
mc otis



On Thu, Mar 6, 2025 at 8:42 PM J Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:

> Echoing the “conspicuous consumption” theories of Veblen, French
> philosopher and sociologist Jean-François Lyotard posited that consumerist
> workers in modern capitalist societies did not want emancipation. Their
> materialistic desires meant they enjoyed “swallowing the shit of capital,”
> Lyotard wrote.
>
> 2 responses: 1)modern philosopher restates plato’s cave allegory 2) one of
> the more disturbing scenes in  Gravity’s Rainbow
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>