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also like, to be clear, i have no dog in the race of defending pomo as a movement, i really couldn't care less. there were undoubtedly a lot of quacks and maybe they had outsize influence. tbh im not deeply informed on the history of may 68 and all its subcurrents, so i dont care the litigate that.
i'm also sympathetic to the argument that the way a philosophy is used matters a lot and reflects upon the thought itself, and of course there's a reciprocal influence there. that isn't being spelled out but i just want to make it clear that i'm chill with that if used carefully.
at the same time though, and for that very reason, some distortions of thinkers and what your broad gloss of them are do matter, especially because you're building to a throughline and generating a historical account leading up to the present
i just really dislike this habit of "our history, wow look our great history as anarchists" and then pointing out the awkward missteps or tendencies in alternative movements. no matter the anarchist current we're able to wipe the error away and essentially ascribe virtue to the rank and file
"a german term like 'wissenschaft' that means something looser than a body of knowledge and may connote something closer to theology and art in a context can become translated as 'science' in english and then greedily directed in critique towards the STEM barbarians"
😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭
honestly im not even sure what to say to that one chief
it's hard to know what exactly is fair game to critique in what way because he's explicitly talking about like the fanbase of philosophers and even then he's like "well it could be used for this" and i kinda just have to scratch my head like yea wow
any argument i make about the texts or about the direct point in question is irrelevant, in the terms of the preamble he set out for himself. so ig ill just say wow if people are slinging a notoriously subtle word to translate around with abuse that's real cringe my guy
we namedropped schismogenesis ! zomg graeber mentioned !
also can i take a moment to just revisit, like in a lot of this we're calling out specific guys and quotedunking and calling out embarrassing personal views they held but like, imagine if someone did this with Scientists. yeah man people are just cringe sometimes lmao, even influential people
i get that its not that simple and in a milieu thats still emerging and is greatly influenced by these individuals it has more import. but like you can do that with anything nascent, and if you were to look at even the history of anarchism, you would take pride in the fact that you rejected
the quackery of its significant early individuals and culture
anyway thats chapter 1 i think im gonna try to actually sleep now
one more thought before i go, i know he discusses like The Left having wacky ideas and stuff, but this is distanced from anarchists. like look at the passage below:
"Throughout the ’80s and ’90s, the anarchist mainstream remained committed to frameworks deeply at odds with... antirealist legitimizers. One prominent anarchist journal at the time even titled itself Reality Now!"