Re: [-empyre-] Matrixial Encounters

[Danny Butt <db@dannybutt.net>]

Ken, as someone who's learnt a lot from your various explorations of class
and culture, I'm a bit surprised at your statement below, which sounds to me
like a bit of easy "moral one-upmanship" in itself. Particularly when Butler
and Bhabha (what an odd, Eagleton-esque pairing!) , whatever our
disagreements with them, are very careful around the rhetorical issues in
their work . I'm also uncomfortable with the implication that Raul, in his
very specific articulation of experiences that don't easily map onto a
Western class-analytic tradition, is somehow not talking about "politics" or
is making the world safe for a post-national ruling class. To me he's
bringing in a perspective that reflects some of my experiences outside the
highly class-bound discourse of art and theory e-mail lists, and it's a
great relief!

Class analysis has its own logic and effectivity, sure, but not one which
has been magically free from heavily gendered and culturally-specific
subjectivities and imaginaries that produce it. Quite a lot of
"post-hegelian" literature has been dealing with this, I've been finding
out, even if the guarantees of liberation are not as forcefully stated as
Euro-US revolutionaries might care for.

Anyway, I just find it weird you want to draw the fault line between
yourself and the work I find most helpful for geopolitically sharpening my
class analytical lenses :).

Danny

--
http://www.dannybutt.net

On 4/22/05 1:31 AM, "McKenzie Wark" <mckenziewark@hotmail.com> wrote:

> This is a bit of a fault-line these days. You have your 'post hegelians'
> (Butler, Bhabba) and your 'non hegelians'â (Deleuze, Negri). I'm in the latter
> camp. Which is to say, really not interested in 'liminality'â or 'the other'.
> That to me is connected to the emerging global 'neo- bourgeois' culture which
> is interested in a connective tissue outside of national spaces that can make
> the world safe for a post national ruling class. It's very interested in
> differences so long as those differences donât really include questions of
> class. It's very interested in ethics (and moral one-upmanship) so long as one
> doesn't really talk about politics.