Quote:
|
I see your point but many economic laws function the same no matter where political chaos is coming from. "Implosion of marxism as a cultural form" doesn't exactly allow me to think in very specific terms. Are you willing to include in this trend what I see as the source of current political chaos: the rise of religious fundamentalism?
|
locobot: only have a minute right now, so:
the implosion of marxism is something i have been working on formalizing for a while now, so it's probably more a personal referencepoint than a public one...i could run out what i mean at some point....anyway, what i think this entails is a collapse of ready-made or evident frames of reference from which a left opposition can process the world in which we find ourselves--marx worked, directly or indirectly, as a signifier that organized dissent well past the point where his conceptions could be applied without requiring significant adjustment (past where they created as many problems as they resolved)..this worked more because "marx" or "marxism" functioned as culturally legitimate than as a function of his (mid-19th century) analyses of capital.
so what i think you have is a period of sustained, profound vertigo on the left.
this is mirrored in what i talk about next, but...
as for the rise of religious fundamentalism---i would not link the two is i was looking to explain fundamentalism in general--which i see more as a response to the destabilization of older dominant forms of identification--nations, regions, localities are being reconfigured, older types of social and economic solidarity are falling apart--fundamentalism becomes--analytically speaking (not for those who indulge the pastime)--a way to avoid this destabilization by investing in signifiers that link you to networks that position you socially, in reference to the cosmos, etc.---it is like pumping helium into a balloon, or reanimating something otherwise dying or dead--strange factoid: pentacostalism is the fastest-growing social movement in the southern hemisphere. i find this bizarre--but it does make sense as a kind of colelctive, visceral response to what the newer phases of capitalist mutation have generated....i have a (related) interpretation of bushworld that sees it as an american variant of the rise of the front national in france (for the fn, i would talk about the implosion of marxism as a factor, btw...) but i gotta go....