David > Recent Status Updates

Thus far not sold on the "rethinking" of colonialism by the critique of James and Fanon. Scott does demonstrate that the James-Fanonian analysis of colonialism leads to a "vindicationist" view of colonialism that necessitates its overthrow through a "longing for total revolution," but I'm not sold on why we need to "rethink" that. Saying that it doesn't fit the postcolonial "problem-space" doesn't suffice.

Utterly ridiculous comparisons of Czechoslovakia to French Saint Domingue, citing Havel against Robespierre and comparing Eastern Bloc "totalitarianism" to enslavement. Absurd and ahistorical comparisons resultant from generalizing philosophical analysis rather than concrete historical reality. Genuinely flabbergasted at such an offensive and insulting passage. Only possible from a white Western leftist.

And so we reach the dreaded chapter on class consciousness...

Wasn't a huge fan in grad school. Still disagree vehemently with the philosophical methodology employed in the preface, along the lines of Levine's critique, but I think Thompson ironically doesn't utilize his idealist understanding of class consciousness like he sets out to, and his work is better for it.

Chapter 24 on Althusser and contextualization of his critique of Gramsci to be directed against Sartre and Garaudy within the politics of the PCF is absolutely stellar. Too often is Althusser taken as a crank working in a vacuum. *For Marx*, while deeply flawed, only appears as heresy by ignoring the spectre of Eurocommunism and barely "Marxist" humanism that surrounded him.