Perry Anderson

up to where I'd read he was visiting the ruins and bumped into 2 refugees from El Salvador seemingly living rough there, who he describes as like "hobo heroes from a Jack London novel". When he told them about its socialist history one of them asked did the rich people come and bomb them with planes? No he replies, their credit failed!

thanks for the clarifying information the pinefox, i stand corrected.

Thanks Map - I appreciate your civility here. I have a couple of follow-ups.

1: to support your and Calzino's appreciation of Davis, I remembered that what I admired about Davis was that after every US election - including midterms! - he would write a long, detailed analysis of the results for NLR, in terms of individual states, psephology, demographics. It was extraordinary work; I marvelled at the expertise and data. Marxists are not always thought to be interested in 'bourgeois democracy' - here was a contradiction of that view.

2: I don't have POSTMODERNISM / JAMESON / CRITIQUE here and couldn't find references to Davis in the other FJ I have to end. Finally I looked in POSTMODERNISM itself and found the endnote that the critic you cited had cited. And I'm afraid that here FJ, indeed, doesn't come out so well. What he praises in Davis, he immediately takes away, in a very uncomradely way. His tone is not well judged. He could engage much more with the substance of Davis's critique, and at least in this particular case, he doesn't.

As noted before, this can't have anything to do with a UK background (which frustrated Davis in the UK); it may have something to do with a US academic turf war which is opaque at this distance.

I still have the feeling that in later work, FJ acknowledged Davis more generously, but I may be imagining that. I have 10 of FJ's books to hand but don't think any of them provide such evidence.

Perry Anderson in THE ORIGINS OF POSTMODERNITY (1998) cites Davis (p.78) as 'Jameson's earliest critic [re PoMo] on the Left', and implies that he had made a valid point about FJ's periodisation.

as much as i can appreciate the need to deflate arrogant, vacant intellectualism, i do find that davis's shtick can sometimes lapse into into fetishization, especially when he starts calling people "effete". philosophy and theory were a refuge for me, and helped me to name the false consciousness that had made my own midwestern, blue collar milieu so hostile to creativity and intellect. these qualities are important too, and, to keep things short, i guess i think it's okay that some of our leftists are more about wit or playfulness than they are about centering labor. we need a bit of the former aspect, too.

of course, ideally you'd have somebody like e.p. thompson, who seems to embody the best aspects of both worlds.

Well said.

He only reads the intro to them

At the party last night talked to someone who used to check out books for Perry Anderson as an undergrad. Terrifying. Said he'd bring a trundle and load it up with 40 books every 3-4 days.

— jq di zuppa🥫 (@outsidadgitator) December 30, 2023