Re: ADORNO & JAZZ: THE WANKFURTS STRIKE BACK

[Ralph Dumain <rdumain@xxxxxxx>]

Redmond's worry over riffraff is not nearly as bad as Doug Kellner's
erstwhile innuendo that I'm an agent provocateur, but Gelder has sunk to a
new low.  What a timid species is this homo academicus.  When it comes to
attacking what you do not understand, I suggest the both of you could stand
some soul-searching.  Do you really understand what you're up against
outside of your small world?  I suppose a foreigner I could forgive, but it
is absolutely unforgivable for an American left intellectual of today not
to understand what I'm talking about.  And how sad it is that those lurkers
who agree with me are so intimidated as to their own professional standing
in the knowledge industry that they cannot speak up.  No wonder a fellow on
one of these cyber-lists once referred to the Wankfurt School.  In fact,
the first riffraff
to set the tone was Van Gelding himself, who chastised poor Lloyd Spencer
for succumbing to the populist temptation for daring to criticize Bloch's
provincialism.  It is difficult to imagine such as eminent scholar being so
obtuse, but that's the problem with footnote-whoring: one doesn't dare take
the baby steps needed to think beyond the familiar.  One must think outside
of a bureaucratic context in order to be able to recreate the relevance of
a body of thought for today.  Nothing would make me happier than for at
least one person to forget about me personally and pick up on some of the
productive lines of enquiry I've suggested.  What a pack of cowards.

At 12:51 PM 5/21/99 -0700, Dennis R Redmond wrote:
>No, no, don't allow the riff raff to set the terms of the >discussion,
that's exactly what they want.