Suchergebnisse

A rejoinder to Sue Penna & Martin O'Brien's "Inequality, Transformation and Political Agency: Reflections on Teresa Ebert's Red Feminism" (1996/97 [see abstract 9816214]), which commented on Ebert's "The Knowable Good: Post-al Politics, Ethics, and Red Feminism" (1995 [see abstract 9702691]). It is suggested that Penna & O'Brien's rejection of the critique of poststructural & postmodern theory demonstrates that these theories have become a form of orthodoxy. For Penna & O'Brien, post theories are truth itself & so beyond the reach of critique. The theoretical issues involved in such a critique are reiterated, & it is shown that criticisms are necessary & important. Highlighted is the question of agency & resistance & the relation between the base & superstructure in Marxist theory. The red feminist rethinking of Marxism offered in the original text is defended as an appropriate avenue for steering clear of the false paths encouraged by poststructural & postmodern theories. 41 References. D. M. Smith

Argues for the return of traditional Marxist ideas such as exploitation, class struggle, & ideology to Left politics as a replacement for the current dominance of poststructuralist feminism & post-Marxist theories. Through an engagement with such thinkers as Jean-Francois Lyotard, Drucilla Cornell, Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau, & Chantal Mouffe, it is shown how, rather than revealing the way toward transformative politics, they deny the potential unrealizability of the "knowable good." Their ideas reinforce the dominant economic logic of global patriarchal capitalism, which can only be confronted directly through a return to red feminism & Marxism. By rejecting "post-al" thinking & its endorsement of the permanence & inevitability of capitalism, radical scholars can return their efforts toward an emancipatory politics that addresses the basic economic needs of humanity & an end to exploitation. 44 References. J. Cowie

A review essay on two books by Slavoj Zizek: The Sublime Object of Ideology (New York, NY: Verso, 1989); & Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991 [see listings in IRPS No. 81]). Zizek's work is judged an exemplary post-al (postmodernism, - Marxism, -structuralism, -industrial, etc) practice that revives a regressive bourgeois idealism that seeks to suppress the historical & revolutionary knowledge necessary for social transformation. Zizek's analysis explains the social in terms of the psyche, using a psychic & rhetorical reductionism as it reintroduces the surplus of enjoyment as the base for the ideological superstructure. Zizek's identification of bureaucracy as the great social evil is compared to the exhortations of Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, & Rush Limbaugh against government interference of individual pursuits. His idealism substitutes enjoyment for labor as the fundamental locus for understanding ideology, the subject, & a conflicted social reality. 4 References. D. Schwartz