RE: Re: Premises, Circularities and Alan's ontolog y

["Devine, James" <jdevine@xxxxxxx>]

Ian writes:> In a second look at this [stuff I wrote about cross-pollinating
high theory and high empirics] after reading Doug's post, I'm wondering if
it doesn't unwittingly express some ivory towerism that we need to work
on..."high-theory" always struck me as elitism when I was in grad school
where I saw a lot of good profs succumb to the "theory is the opiate of the
academic  class". I know most of us on this list are far more politically
active than most citizens, but I do think Nick Dyer-Witheford is onto
something at the end of "Cyber-Marx":

> "Academics perhaps lose some pretensions as the bearer of great truths and
grand analysis, but they become the carriers of particular skills, knowledge
and  accesses useful to movements in which they participate on the basis of
increasing commonalities with other members of post-Fordist 'mass
intellect.'

> "I would add that the matrix for these connections is formed by the new
movements of social unrest. Participation in these movements pulls academics
into contact with other public service workers protesting cutbacks, wider
labor and trade unionist organizations, and the many diverse  constituencies
surging against capital's agenda of high-technology austerity. Out of such
contacts  comes a corporate-university interaction very different from that
which capital intends -- one that disseminates opposition to corporate rule
from the streets back onto the campuses, and again from the campuses onto
the streets."<

that's right: without the anti-systemic movements, academic leftists ain't
worth shite. The same is true of activists and isolated individuals. I think
having a good "alternative research program that's needed to counteract and
ultimately overthrow the hegemony of the neoclassical orthodoxy" can help
promote such a movement, but it's the movement that matters in the end. The
theory can help the movements think for themselves, something that's
necessary if we are to attain democracy (socialism, self-rule by the
people), but is no substitute. -- JD