[OPE-L:3232] Re: Re: Reply to Gil and Ajit: Simple Commodity Production/ "Contemporary society"

From: Paul Zarembka (zarembka@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU)
Date: Tue May 16 2000 - 10:07:50 EDT


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On Tue, 16 May 2000, Ajit Sinha wrote:

> It depends upon what kind of audience I have. If my audience is convinced that a
> text must be understood through the subjectivity of its author, then may be I'll
> loose my audience. But if I have people like Althusser or Foucault as my audience
> then they probably be rather listening to me keenly. Cheers, ajit sinha

Ajit,

I don't know if Foucault would give you an audience, but I do know about
Althusser and, he, as I have already noted, does NOT exclude Marx's
judgement of himself. He "merely" says that Marx's own judgement is not
the final arbiter. If we go your route, we cannot give a damn about what
you yourself mean, nor myself, nor anyone on this list, and we really
descend into nihilism.

OPE-3183:

>"[Marx would] be the first to agree that you must never judge someone on
>the basis of his own self-conscious image, but on the basis of the whole
>process which, behind this consciousness, produces it" (Althusser, "Is it
>Simple to be a Marxist in Philosophy", p. 178-79)

>This passage is similar to Ajit's but a "softer" version, because, above,
>what the author meant is not irrelevant.
 
Ajit in OPE 3175:

>>...I read a *book* or a series of books as an object that needs to be
>>analyzed on its own, irrespective of what the author meant.

Paul Z.

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Paul Zarembka, on OS/2 and supporting RESEARCH IN POLITICAL ECONOMY at
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