| Popis: |
The problems of post-nineteen sixties left-wing politics are explored by analysing a hypothetical collective memory of the left. This memory claims that the hegemony over thought and practice held by Marxism has been broken down since the nineteen sixties by many different non-class based forms of oppression. The nature of Marxism as one political movement among other such movements is then explored and implications for any movement that tries to base itself on unified and universal values are outlined. It is argued that any politics based on unified values will create oppression because the values of such a politics will exclude the values of some other group. The possibility that politics can be based on difference is then explored. The works of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari and Jean-Francois Lyotard are examined as examples of difference based political theories. It is then concluded that, in general, difference is an inadequate basis for liberatory politics because difference based politics is only concerned to protect the process of differentiation and so ignores the particular values on which anti-oppression movements have been based. The possibility that difference and value based theories and movements are actually part of the one debate and do not follow each other in a linear progression is then analysed. The difference/value debate is characterised as consisting of paralysed motion because both difference and value have important critiques of each other and answers to those critiques, thereby creaating a constant motion between the two poles of difference and value which yet never moves beyond these two poles. |
