Re: Rhetorical Gestures (was Re: Spivak sez...)

[Dennis R Redmond <dredmond@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 14 Oct 1999, Charles Brown wrote:

> But isn't a better negative critique of the national-juridical
> foundations of capitalist society found in Marx and Engels than Kant, as
> well as the positive critique ? And it seems strange that the area of
> Kant's weakness, racism/nationalism (see Yoshie's posts on PEN-L on
> this) is what Spivak uses him for.

Hegel transcended Kant, and Marx transcended both, but they didn't do this
by simply dumping the past and starting all over again; you have to think
through that past, acknowledge it, work through it, and then finally act
consciously to change it. Marx sat in the library and read the bourgeois
economists, and that's why he was able to construct a theory of capital.
Similarly, Spivak is trying to read the, shall we say, neo-Kantianisms of
the comprador bourgeoisies around the world in a radical light (whether
she's succeeded or not is another question).

-- Dennis