RESPONSE TO JORDAN
Jordan asks whether I might videotape and post the sessions of my course. I think that would not be a good idea. It would transform a course into a performance, and demote the students to an audience. I have, after all, already posted fourteen YouTube lectures on Marx, Mannheim, and Wilmsen! The world is not crying out for more.
OFF TOPIC: Recent posts, primarily with regard to Medicare for All, have discussed whether passing progressive legislation can pass in the next Congress once a progressive President is in office. I have been one of the skeptics. Here’s a reason why, from Kevin Drum’s blog at Mother Jones:
ReplyDeleteWhen unions oppose legislation that the Republicans also oppose, it has a zero chance of passage. Few, if any, who favor climate-friendly legislation, are willing to pay the price or give anything up to get it, write I as I sit comfortably in my air conditioned house.
Sorry, the part I pasted in didn't transmit. I'll try again later.
ReplyDeleteHere's another try at Drum's blog:
ReplyDelete“Los Angeles has been sitting on a contract for record-cheap solar power for more than a month---and city officials declined to approve it Tuesday because of concerns raised by the city-run utility’s labor union, which is still fuming over Mayor Eric Garcetti’s decision to shut down three gas-fired power plants...In addition to 400 megawatts of solar power, the Eland project would include at least 200 megawatts of lithium-ion batteries, capable of storing solar power during the day and injecting it into the grid for four hours each night. The combined price to L.A. ratepayers of the solar and storage would be 3.3 cents per kilowatt hour--also a record low for this type of contract.
“In recent months, IBEW Local 18 has run television and radio ads attacking Garcetti’s Green New Deal initiative, which includes the retirement of three coastal gas plants that employ more than 400 LADWP workers. City officials say none of the LADWP workers at those plants will lose their jobs. But that hasn’t satisfied the union, which has warned that Garcetti’s plans for fighting climate change would drive up electricity prices and eliminate good-paying jobs.”
Your response to Jordan is, in my view, 100 percent correct.
ReplyDeleteI respect your personal decision, but it's hard to read this explanation as anything other than academic elitism. There's not many ways for me to learn about Marxist sociology, and I'm pretty sure only four or five lectures on that were online. I can't remember if that was the one that seemed like it was unfinished or if it was the ideological critique one.
ReplyDeleteThat is extremely uncharitable. The classroom changes dramatically when a camera is "on". Prof Wolff has no obligation to video these. Fergus
Delete@sonic
ReplyDeleteActually his response is not academic elitism; it's common sense. If you watch all his online lectures on ideological critique plus all the online lectures on Marx, plus read what he has written on the blog about Weber and Mannheim, you'll get a very good idea where RPW is coming from. His and Todd Gitlin's students deserve to be able to take the course without having their every word and gesture recorded on YouTube.
Elitism, because I care about my students? Odd. I have posted seven lectures, and published two books and half a dozen lengthy journal articles on the subject, as well as a long "tutorial" on this blog. That has got to be as much Wolff as anyone can stand!
ReplyDeleteActually, we could even stand more Wolff lectures.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, why no Foucault in your course? Mystification of social reality seems to be his area, in books like the History of Madness, Discipline and Punishment and the History of Sexuality. Is it just because he's not your specialty nor that of Todd Gitlin or do you
have some objection to his approach?
"There's not many ways for me to learn about Marxist sociology,"
ReplyDeleteUh what? There's mountains and mountains of free marxist literature, lectures, podcasts, audio files, filmed clips, etc., all over the internet!
Maybe go to https://www.marxists.org/ You'll die long before you make a dint in the site.
Wallerstein,
ReplyDeleteWhen Marx claims that we are bogged down in mysticism, he believes there is a rational explanation that rests behind the mysticism and can account for it (8th thesis on Feuerbach). So there is a rational explanation behind mystifications such as the commodity fetish, or the fact capitalist see investments and competition as the source of surplus value and not labor. Once we get behind these mystifications we can offer real explanations that are grounded in human practice.
So far as I can tell, and I may be wrong, Foucault REJECTS the appearance/reality mystification/praxis distinction, and I seriously doubt he thinks there's anything behind or underneath the surface of any given phenomena. He's post modern in that sort of way.
Chris,
ReplyDeleteThat's a common error about Foucault. He probably does not believe that there is any "real" explanation unlike Marx, but he does not believe that there's isn't anything behind or underneath the surface. He explicitly says in later interviews that he recognizes that there is something which is called "madness": he's not questioning that, he's explaining how society, for its own reasons, came to label it "madness" or "mental illness". So too he's not denying that some people prefer to have sex with people of their own sex or gender: he's explaining how the label "homosexual" was developed historically, since for example, the Greeks had no word for "homosexual" or "gay".
That is, Foucault says he's giving historical explanation of how our labels came into being (and that has to do with who has power to label things), not that there isn't anything that the labels apply to. He is simply pointing out that the world could be carved up along different lines.
He doesn't believe that there is any objective or neutral or wholly rational explanation, but whatever explanation is used is going to have to do with who has the power to impose an explanation.
Wallerstein,
ReplyDeleteI don't quite think I misconstrued Foucault. He does at least reject the appearance/reality distinction, and ultimately he has no ground/substance/essence/principle etc to rest his arguments upon. There is nothing beyond or behind power.
And he is certainly outside the Marxist tradition.
Obviously, Foucault's outside the Marxist tradition.
ReplyDeleteHowever, he's more subtle or more complex than you give him credit for. He would not deny that there are effective treatments for what are labeled as "mental illnesses", that some treatments are more effective than others and that those proposed by contemporary science are more effective than those proposed by the Medieval Church. However, the labeling process is a question of power.
I apologize for my angry outburst earlier. I had just finished reading the blog post about the cost of college education. Then I read this post, which seemed to imply that my learning wasn't as serious or important, by use of the word "act." I thought that was a funny way to compare anything to the modern American institutions for higher education.
ReplyDeleteBut to accuse Robert Paul Wolff of elitism is far more a ridiculous description. Not wanting to put an image of yourself on the internet is a right rarely respected these days, and I think you're brave for doing as much as you already have. I'm grateful. I listen to lectures like these every day at work, and I have determined that yours are the best. So I am grateful. And I promise to think twice before leaving a comment in the future.
For the record, here's the library of these lectures that I've been able to find:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCS7aoxEiTRtuYjZQTsaAVqg Alex Campbell:
Kant's Critique of Pure Reason 1 - 9
Freud 1 - 4
Marx 1 - 7
And a delicious one episode lecture on Rawls' Game Theory
https://www.youtube.com/user/rwolff12/videos Robert Paul Wolff:
Ideological Critique 1 - 4 (one version of episode 3 includes Which Side Are You On at the end of it)
That's the series about Mannheim and Wilmsen I assume you are talking about, but it seems like the fourth episode is not the end of it. Is there more somewhere? While doing various searches, I found several long posts from 2011 that look like they might be the lectures transcribed. I find book reading mostly inaccessible though, so I probably wont get around to reading them, although your writing is very good.
Agree with anonymous. For anyone that has ever had to stand in front of an audience and speak, the presence of cameras and/or other recording devices fundamentally changes the nature of the presentation. Professor Wolff has no obligation to further hurl himself into the spotlight, especially if he thinks - and he would be the best judge - it would harm his students, or his actual articulation of ideas.
ReplyDelete