Re: what is to be done with what is to be done? was Re: AUT: RE: Virno piece

[Sebastian Budgen <sebastian@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear Doug,

for what it's worth, I certainly don't hate you, although sometimes I
think you do your very best to achieve this result, if you don't mind
me saying so. In fact, I think that WALL STREET is a very good book,
which I recommend regularly to anyone who wants to know anything about
contemporary finance capital and, while I haven't read your latest
book, if it's up to the previous standard, I'm sure that it's very
good. It's a little surprising that you take reported conversation
recounted by Slavoj, of all people (well known for his mischievousness
and liking for stirring things up), as gospel, given the number of
times you have interviewed him by now.

What Slavoj probably meant was that we 'hated' your paper. But even
there, it's not entirely correct: I thought that it was a very fluent
and entertaining talk. Unfortunately, it had very little to do with the
subject of the conference and it's register, while perfectly acceptable
on its own merits, didn't fit with the other papers.

Sorry you didn't enjoy the conference: but then you can't please all of
the people all of the time...

Sebastian

On Oct 28, 2004, at 6:41 PM, Doug Henwood wrote:

> Sebastian Budgen wrote:
>
>> It will be published next year by Duke UP in the book collecting
>> together the papers from the Essen conference on Lenin.
>
> Interesting. I made a presentation at this conference - which the lead
> organizer, Slavoj Zizek, described as the only truly Leninist one,
> because it was so distant from the literal Lenin - but evidently it's
> not included in the collection. Too journalistic? Too unfriendly?
>
> Shortly after the conference, Zizek told me "They hate you." When I
> asked who "they" were, he said, "Callinicos and Budgen." I guess they
> do.
>
> Anyway, the talk is at
> <http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Lenin.html>.
>
> Doug
>
> PS: Most of the papers were pretty dull, so save your money and skip
> this collection. And out of 17 presenters, 16 were men (if you don't
> count the woman who read Badiou's paper for him).
>
>
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>



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