Jane:
Should we not perhaps engage with just a few structures and
their contingent interactions: class, gender and perhaps
ethnicity/nationality? Or, perhaps better, if we want to talk
about all sorts of differences, should we lose sight of the fact that
they may be bound together in some sense, that these differences are
connected in some sense? If we can't spend enough for our children,
for mentally ill, physically disabled, or whatever, is it not
primarily because we don't have control over owr own wealth that we
produce? Is this 'incapacity' not expressed in terms of lean budget,
restructuring, market, share prices, etc? Isn't there anything that
binds the conditions of the mentally ill, rough sleeping, children on
the streets and the social relations involving the production of our
lives?
Can't Antipode define more precisely the meaning of 'being
critical', 'being radical' (although its definition will be
contested, deconstructed)? Can't it restrict itself to certain
intellectual products?
No critique can be powerful and emancipatory without
it being a critique of the conditions under which our lives are
produced and reproduced -- historically and geographically. Critique
of class (and not just capitalism) is fundamental. It is _more_
central than any other singular structure of material-political
inequality, although it is not the only one. There is therefore a
need for combining our class critique with other critiques: feminist,
ecological, etc etc. A Marxist-feminist work is much more radical
than a mere Marxist work. A Marxist-feminist work which is also
critical of the conditions under which nature is produced is even
more critical/radical. And so on.
Any critique which ignores class is less than a radical critique. But
a class critique must be combined with critiques of the non-class
conditions under which class is reproduced -- especially at a lower
level of abstraction.
I wish Antipode could stipulate that papers submitted to it must be
radical in the following sense or in a sense closely related to this.
To be radical is to present a critique of class conditions in its
economic, political, idelogical and historical-geographic aspects.
Being radical also includes combining a critique of class with one of
the other structures of power (e.g. gender; agism; able-ism;
regionalism/ethnicity/nationalism, etc etc). Post-marxism, neo- and
classical-marxismt, marxist-feminism, materialist political ecology,
anti-imperialism, the literature on racial aspects of class, the
literature on body and accumulation and so on can all
contribute. There is a need for working together but there must be
something to define togetherness. Critique of class provides just
that and must be necessary criterion of any radicalness of radical
work, in my humble opinion.
To be radical is to go to the roots. But not all roots are equally
hard to uproot. We must make a choice. Let Antipode justify its
subtitle 'Radical' in an explicit and politically productive manner.
I know what the post-modernists and post-marxists would
say to me, if they care to take a look at this at all: I am being
class-reductionist, am giving primacy to economy, being logocentric,
etc. etc. Well: as for postmodernists: they even hardly now what
class means, and they themselves are discourse-reductionist any way!
I sometimes wonder if they ever feel the necessary need to eat,
drink, have a cloth on their body.... If they do, why don't they ask
first questions first: how are these things produced and what are the
social-political-ideological relations involved in this production?
As for post-marxists: they are revelling in their pursuit of
third way reformist politics and in their act of fetishizing
contingencies (as if we have to make a choice between absolute
determination and absolute contingency), and so on. The question
about food, etc above can also be asked to them -- with 'necessary'
in italics.
I am sorry if I have been angry at times while penning
down these words. I would like Antipode to be really a
journal of radical scholarship, for geographers don't have one. I
have been thinking about radical political economy and socail
theory for the last few days and your e-mail just caught me at the
right moment, and thus my thinking process caught fire!
Raju
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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