AUT: Re: the masses (Poulantzas), was antiwar movement

["David McInerney" <borderlands@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Angela,

I think you'll find that the story you heard about the car accident actually
was about Roland Barthes.  I can't remember whether the skin colour thing
was actually the case, but he was hit by a car or truck from memory.
Poulantzas was definitely a jumper.

I agree with what you said re subjection etc - I didn't know quite how to
formulate what I was thinking (I'm certainly not infallible!) - but perhaps
we might say that we are attempting to communicate with others a poliical
position that perhaps entails a certain technology of the self, a process of
becoming someone other than who we are?  That part of political activity is
a process in which in forming alliances with others we change ourselves and
them?  This also entails an openness towards them.  I was using terms such
as 'mass culture' and 'mainstream' to indicate ways of living that are
largely unexamined by those who live them.  These terms may have limitations
but I think you might see what I'm getting at.  For example, knee-jerk
reactions - might we say, 'conditioned responses'? - of many Australian
citizens to news reports (which are politically loaded with phrases such as
'queue-jumpers') regarding illegal immigrants landing on the outlying
islands of Australia.  It might be that many people who react in similar
ways to something such as this might understand themselves at other times to
have little in common with one another, to be understandable as or even see
themselves as belonging to 'subcultures'.

I don't know much about Balibar's arguments with the PCF over immigration
besides some stuff I picked up from talking to Warren Montag and others who
know Balibar, and I think there might be something on this in _Race, Nation,
Class_ too.  Certainly the rightward shift of the PCF in the early 1980s
would have been very distressing for him, and at that time (at 40 years of
age) for a lifelong Communist militant to leave the party must have been
very difficult.  Balibar remains a supporter of immigrants within France and
has also been active on the Palestine issue in recent years, starting a
petition against the Wall.

David


----- Original Message -----
From: ".: s0metim3s :." <s0metim3s@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, March 28, 2004 5:21 PM
Subject: AUT: RE: Re: the masses (Poulantzas), was antiwar movement


> David:
>
> : What I meant
> : was not that we might not be from the
> : masses, but rather how do we relate to
> : those who remain within the
> : mainstream (subjected/dominated) mass
> : culture?
>
> I think I get your point (and agree about the
> infallibility thing), but isn't there a
> contradiction between, rightly, insisting that one
> not be condescending and assuming that other
> people are the ones who are subjected/dominated?
> I mean, how can one tell one isn't
> subjected/dominated? What are the signs of this?
>
> I think I can safely say that I'm subjected, else
> my utterances would be completely unintelligible
> to anyone else (rather than just unintelligible to
> some, many, who knows).  In any case, I'm
> suspicious of phrases like 'mass culture' and
> 'mainstream' -- they're too ready to switch into
> claims about 'false consciousness', and seems to
> me that there isn't some generalised public sphere
> (which we might appeal to as some goal of
> discourse), but rather a series of subcultures,
> which overlap at times, at times not, which we
> step in and out of variously at times and in ways,
> and some of which have more resources at their
> disposal to broadcast as if they are the
> 'mainstream'.
>
> I'll check out the Balibar refs, thanks.
>
> On Poulantzas, yeah, i know how he topped himself;
> I'm interested in the prelude to this.  Someone
> told me a story about P being hit by a car,
> injured on the street and ignored by passers-by
> because of his darker skin-colour, this in the
> context of a rise in anti-immigrant politics in
> France.  I'm not sure how true this is; but it
> would make me miserable, perhaps inconsolably so.
> Given Balibar's arguments with the CP over
> migration, it would square since the stakes just
> became so much more immediate ...
>
> Angela
> _______________
>
> <end message>
>
>
>
>
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