Dialectic of Counter-Enlightenment: The Frankfurt School

[Wombaticus Rex]

I have no stake in exonerating or blaming the Bilderberg gang for ruining the world. Until this episode, I had, in fact, never heard of them.

I love the smell of informed commentary in the morning.

Like other candidates for the role of chief conspiratorial clique—the Masons, the Illuminati, the Trilateral Commission, the denizens of Bohemian Grove, take your pick—they can surely take care of themselves.

Quite so. Indeed, my understanding of "The Enlightenment" is that it was a primarily Masonic production. I don't invoke that as some indictment, it was probably their single finest moment and a valuable contribution to the human endeavor.

(Or at least, what "the human endeavor" could have been -- we seem to be primarily focused on metastasis in recent decades to the exclusion of anything else.)

Big thanks for the multiple reminders in this thread to READ WALLERSTEIN ASAP

[tapitsbo]

Thinking about the subjects smeared together in this thread while walking I couldn't help wondering about the way that on a planet reigned over by dollar-dealing corporate bodies, it sure is striking how much of the international knowledge production apparatus speaks to us in terms of a world seen through Marx-coloured goggles, especially everything under the umbrella of the ultra-influential and affluent social sciences, whose ripples readily reach both the hard sciences and their attendant efforts at research and development, as well as the hugh manatees with their underestimated effects on the way the overall omelette is cooked. Even Foucault, who popped up a few times in the globs of text above this one, is one of the darlings of these institutions.

How appropriately inevitable will it be that the communist juggernauts of the 20th century come to be seen as an escalation of colonialism, not a break with it, but this time directed at the "world island"?

Do I believe that the USSR and communist China were MIHOP/LIHOP hybrid children of Anglo-American and other industrialists and deep planners? This hypothesis is hard to verify, and I'm as uneasy as anybody here about swallowing far-right fairytales hook, line, and sinker. Surely some of you must have done some thinking and snooping around the corners of this issue?

Tired territory undoubtedly, but stuff that never really gets addressed with anything other than the occasional scrap of stale toast. After all, I've witnessed people who appeared far better informed than I am mumbling about the "faked Cold War". What would it take to further flesh out what's suggested by this phrase?

[SonicG]

Kevin MacDonald is certainly a racist/far right weirdo. As to Preparata, I can't claim to understand his worldview- which may or may not gussy up right wing tropes and put them in nominally left packaging.

I've never before recently paid serious attention to postmodern/post-sructural type Theory but would agree that Foucault has not fueled particularly effective radical activity. I see it more so as a means of explaining some aspects of social relationships.

Recently though, I have stumbled upon Todd May, who I consider an intriguing advocate of these sorts of ideas:

the poststructural anarchist

Todd May interviewed by Richard Marshall.

Continues at: http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/the-post ... anarchist/

Although the Situationists certainly fueled Paris '68, and I see their output as being an outgrowth of Frankfurt to some degree, and certainly a radicalization of those ideas, with no "shady" funding or connections, as far as I know anyhow...

[semper occultus]

...when you've finished the Frankfurt School do you move on to here....?






[/political satire]