This is no response at all. I would like people to debate the
meaning of radical and the significance of class as Jo, Michael
etc are doing.
Trying to deconstruct this playful and frivolous response, I may
say that there is also a crucial lack of rigour in the response.
Class is being seen as class resistance, that too overt resistance.
But class is not reducible to that, although class resistance is a
necessary aspect of class.
Raju
> Date: Thu, 25 Nov 1999 15:30:42 -0000
> Subject: RAE
> From: Gilbert D <[log in to unmask]>
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Reply-to: Gilbert D <[log in to unmask]>
> I'm sorry but there's a crucial lack of rigour in these recent debates -
> the CGF seems to be where institutional Geography and the Britsih
> universities were back in the bad-old days of the 1980s before the
> modernisation of research. Clearly what we need is an agreed, peer-reviewed
> system to measure radicalism. I recommend that Raju convenes the first
> Radical Assessment Exercise. Each of us should then submit up to 4 radical
> acts which would then be judged and graded on a scale from 1 to 5.
> Especially radical acts would get a star.
>
> Examples might include:
>
> Reading Das Kapital to your children as a bed time story (reading it in
> Russian from the official CPSU version of the collected works counts as
> international recognition.)
>
> Driving past a Shell garage with an empty tank in the middle of Wales* (I've
> actually managed this one - boy do I suffer for my radicalism)
> * Doing this in Nebraska or the Northern Territories counts double
>
> Stopping the traffic in central London - a form of everyday militancy which
> can be achieved every day - usually between 5 and 7 in the evening.
>
> Getting stopped at US immigration because you wrote critical, problematising
> commentaries all over the visa form (for UK radicals this also counts as
> international output.)
>
> We could do this exercise every four years, although this could produce
> problems as we try to do too many radical acts at once to meet the deadline.
>
>
>
> --------------------------------------------------
> David Gilbert
> Department of Geography,
> Royal Holloway,
> University of London,
> Surrey TW20 0EX.
>
> Tel (01784) 443653
> Fax (01784) 472836
> [log in to unmask]
> --------------------------------------------------
>
>
>
Raju J Das
Department of Geography
University of Dundee
Dundee DD1 4HN
United Kingdom
Phone 01382 348073 work
01382 737097 home
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