Re: The "Desirable and POSSIBLE" vs "BASTANTE!"

[Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx>]

Carrol replied to me:
>> I agree with you on the main arguments of this post, but I'm wondering if
>> it may not be important for committed socialists to talk with other
>> committed socialists in a way that would "give hope and meaning to the
>> *Present*, which capitalism empties of meaning," as you say. What are the
>> places of art, fantasy, desire, 'strawberry & chocolate,' etc. in this
>> context: conversations among committed socialists? I think that this is a
>> question that has gendered implications.
>
>Yes, I think it very important, which is one reason journals and books (and
>maillists!) read only by socialists or sympathizers are so important.
>
>I also believe that the question has gendered implications, and one reason
>I spent so many days wrestling with the post before sending it is that I
>kept hoping that bulbs would flash and I would see at least some of
>those implications.

I think that conversations among socialists can and should create a sense
of camaraderie, but often the models of camaraderie were male-centered ones
in the past (Cf. Paula Rabinowitz's _Labor and Desire: Women's
Revolutionary Fiction in Depression America_). The camaraderie based upon
gender equality will foster (and get nurtured in turn by) the kinds of art,
fantasy, desire, etc. that may not have been prominent on the left in the
past.

>an argument
>against the assumption that the socialist agitator or propagandist had a
>neutral relationship to his/her "audience," which was therefore to be
>shaped by the content or style of the agitator's words.

I'm very interested in this. You've addressed this subject on several
lists. For instance, I remember you saying that an audience must first be
_created_ for works of art by leftists, before such works become meaningful
(or something to that effect) on LBO.

You wrote this on PEN-L:
<<The way I have put this in the past, and if senility and ill health holds
off long enough I'll try to develop it in a decent paper, is that the left
always (in the old cliche) preaches only to the converted. That it's no use
preaching to the nonconverted because they won't even ever know that the
preaching is going on.

The belief that persuasion and argument comes first, inivitation to action
second, is a prejudice of the academic world. (I'm not anti-academic. I
usually use the word in a positive rather than pejorative sense, but I do
have a sense of the limitations it imposes as a lifestyle.)>>

I think I agree with the above, but I would like you to elaborate on it.

Yoshie