Subber Code
I thig I hab a subber code.
I feel lousy, achy, tired, and congested, which is why I got so easily impatient with last night’s post. On the good side, I took Tink to the vet this morning, and she’s not dying; just a typical kittenish upper respiratory thing. So she’s off the terramycin ointment in the eye treatment, and on the amoxicillin down the throat treatment: not much of an improvement, girl; I’m sorry. I’m sure she’s thinking that at this rate it’s only a matter of days before my cruelty takes the form of suppositories.
Anyway: despite my subber code, I’ve knocked out a couple hundred pages of reading, and have a couple of minor insights from Resnick and Wolff — although the case with Knowledge and Class is kinda odd, because it’s sufficiently un-useful that I’m relieved to not be stopping every couple pages to take notes. Following is what I did note.
Resnick and Wolff, like Raymond Williams (whose perspective they acknowledge), note that Marx uses the concept of class in different ways in different contexts. They also helpfully clarify the effects of understanding Marx’s epistemological viewpoint on the vulgar-Marxist charges of economic determinism, although it took me a couple of readings to get my head around it. “Here, then, is the resolution we offer to the traditional Marxian debate over economic determinism. None of the economic, humanist, or other debated determinisms is acceptable. All of them are connected to epistemological standpoints different from and unacceptable to Marxian theory as we understand it. The stress of Marxian theory upon economics in general, and upon class in particular, is a matter of its particular conceptual approach to social analysis. That approach should not and cannot be confused with the concrete knowledge it produces. Class has a role of conceptual priority in the former but not in the latter. Marxian theory’s overdeterminist epistemological viewpoint — dialectical materialism — precludes the sort of ontological arguments for one or another essence of social reality which characterize the debate. Class as an economic concept is an entry point and a focus — not an essence for — Marxian theory and the knowledge it produces. For Marxian theory it is no more determinant of social life than any other aspect” (50).
Resnick and Wolff oppose essentialism of any sort — the notion that any phenomenon may have one determinate cause — with their own derivation of the concept (from Freud and Althusser) of overdetermination, and construct Marx as anti-essentialist in his definition of class as process. I’m not sure whether I buy it or not, but I’ll suggest that their definition of class as process (fundamental class process, subsumed class process, or nonclass process) is as unhelpful to me as any essentialisms might be to them: it offers no useful insights for my understanding of what happens in the wired writing classroom. Still, I’ll plug through the rest of Knowledge and Class in the next couple of days, just to give myself the theoretical vocabulary for Gibson-Graham’s book.
I’m feeling pretty crappy tonight, so I’ll stop there. And I know it’s Friday and I’ve had this idea for a Friday Non-Dissertational rattling around in my head for a few days, but I don’t think I’ll have the energy to get it all down tonight. Maybe tomorrow.