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Title: Politics and Culture: Working Hypotheses for a Post-Revolutionary Society (Parallax: Re-Visions of Culture and Society) by Michael Ryan ISBN: 0-8018-3827-4 Publisher: Johns Hopkins Univ Pr Pub. Date: December, 1989 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $42.00

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Average Customer Rating: 2.5 (2 reviews)

Rating: 4
Summary: ATTN: fans of Toni Negri
Comment: Michael Ryan's book of essays follows his ground-breaking study,'Marxism and Deconstruction', which Derrida himself has praised as an influential book. In this book, Ryan explores the intersections and contributions of a variety of politically-committed western theorists and philosophers in the late twentieth-century, beginning with the confrontations between the mostly-French poststructuralists and materialists (represented by Ryan himself as well as Derrida, Jonathan Culler, Delueze, et al) and the German structuralists and rationalists (represented by Habermas).

Then in Chapter 2, Ryan provides a very useful and unique critical analysis and bibliographic history of Toni Negri and the Italian autonomy movement. This chapter might be particularly interesting for the many readers who just discovered Negri through his and Michael Hardt's amazingly-popular book, 'Empire.' Indeed, if you are intrigued by Negri, I recommend checking out this book.

For more by and about Negri, see the collection of his early works (many of which have been superseded by his more recent works) in the Red Notes publication, 'Revolution Retrieved'. For in-depth analyses on many of Empire's most important topics, see Negri's 'Politics of Subversion' plus Negri and Hardt's 'Labor of Dionysus' as well as Negri and Guattari's 'Communists Like Us'. If you up to the challenge, read his 'Marx Beyond Marx' alongside Marx's 'Grundrisse'. See too, his book 'Insurgencies' and his articles in 'Marxism Beyond Marxism', 'Radical Italian Thought', 'Readme!' and 'Ghostly Demarcations'. Analyses *about* Negri include the introductions and bibliographic essays in some of the above-listed books, like 'Marx Beyond Marx' and 'Politics of Subversion'; plus the concluding chapter Marcia Landy's 'Film, Politics and Culture' (entitled "Gramsci Beyond Gramsci"); the double-issue of 'Rethinking Marxism' devoted to Empire, to be published in early 2002, as well as some earlier articles in Rethinking Marxism, including an excellent introduction by Jason Read. Note: Thanks to 'Empire's success, more works about Negri are surely forthcoming.

Rating: 1
Summary: a dismal amalgam of socialist prattle and pop-philosophy
Comment: Much of this book is effectively unreadable by persons not versed in modern philosophy. I have little basis to form an opinion on Professor Ryan's analysis on deconstructionism and other faddish nostrums of the Modern Language Association. His quota-mongering, while pretending magnanimity, would be a naked power grab for victim-careerists. The practical result of his silly elimination of universal rules (replaced by group-grievances) allows for all sorts of cute if grisly thought-experiments.

Ryan's invective against the concept of "property", however, provides grist for the mill. He either has no understanding of human nature or he is blinded by visions of utopia. A rebuttal to the socialism prattled by academia in liberal arts can be summarized by the entomologist E. O. Wilson's comment "wonderful theory -- wrong species." Ryan cannot comprehend that few people aspire to leadership and fewer still for practical benefit of the community -- this is why he seems puzzled that the utopias he imagines are populated by Stalin, Mao, Pol-pot and others. Power can be concentrated (and typically is for evil pursuits) when countervailing interests are mute and emasculated. For citizens within a society to have the means and the interest to protect each other from demagogues and knaves requires protected property right -- recognized by custom (informal acceptance) and law (judicially-sanctioned enforcement). As such, _Politics_ is a waste of time.