Date: Wed, 4 May 1994 15:06:03 -0700
Sender: pen-l@ecst.csuchico.edu
From: scullen@ucrac1.ucr.edu (Steve Cullenberg)
Subject: Politics and Postmodernism
 
With all due respect to Anders Schneiderman, students on campuses did not
understand the complexities and crises of the financial system long before
postmodernism and Derrida found their way onto the scene.
 
It is true that postmodernism has probably not informed directly many
political struggles outside the academy, but neither has Marxist theory,
post-Keynesian theory, and so on.  The problem is, I think, that too many
see theory as something that is to be applied rather than done.
 
Politics takes place at many sites and has various effectivities.  The
academy, the street, and the Congress are all worthy, different, and
important places to  struggle. The influence of the Left in so-called
popular or electoral struggles in this country is not noted for its great
success, and I think it would be folly to lay the blame of this lack of
success at the feet of Derrida.
 
In the academy, however, something as seemingly esoteric as Derrida's
attack on logocentrism years ago has provided theoretical space (and
subsequently, institutional space) for many of the multicultural and
feminist theories of recent years (and it is not only French feminists -
before you sneer too much you might want to look at the collection in Linda
Nicholson's book _Feminism/Postmodernism_ and many of the essays in Ferber
and Nelson's _Beyond Economic Man_, especially by Diana Strassmann and
Rhonda Williams).  George Will knows the political import of these
developments.  I guess he must figure it out from reading Business Week.
 
Steve Cullenberg